Host: Jose Dinneny
Keiko U. Torii
Department of Biology, University of Washington
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Institute of Transformative Biomolecules (WPI-ITbM), Nagoya University
It has become evident that plants use a myriad of secreted peptides and small chemicals to coordinate their growth, development, and response to environmental insults. These signals could work for long-distance, a shoot-to-root communication for physiological adjustment, a short-distance paracrine manner, or an autocrine manner to coordinate developmental potential of plant tissue patterning. Owing to the importance of plants for our environment and sustenance, new approaches are needed to further understand and manipulate plants. To this end, we are forming a cross-disciplinary team of scientists, including synthetic organic chemists, structural chemists, and plant biologists to develop artificial ligands and receptors to probe, understand, and manipulate plant growth and development. Our strategies to break the evolutionary and cultural barriers will be discussed.