Laboratory of Plant Physiology
The Laboratory of Plant Physiology of Wageningen University & Research aims to contribute to the understanding of how plants function. We are particularly interested in how plants respond to changes in their sometimes hostile environment.
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A step forward to making crops tolerant to severe drought
An international consortium of researchers led by Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, has sequenced the genome of the ‘resurrection plant’ Xerophyta viscosa. Today the team publishes the DNA sequence in Nature Plants. In their paper, the team reveals a genetic ‘footprint’ of the amazing ability of this plant to tolerate severe drought for long periods of time. The team hopes their results will contribute to a faster development of food crops that are resilient enough to cope with foreseen global climate changes.
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Courses
The Laboratory of Plant Physiology teaches plant physiology to 1st and 2nd year BSc Biology, Plant Sciences and Forest & Nature Conservation students. In addition, we contribute to a whole series of more specialized courses for 3rd year BSc, MSc and PhD students from several Study Programmes.
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Research
Important aspects in our research are the processes occurring in plants in response to a (changing) environment and the response of the plant to this environment. We study, for example, the effect of environmental factors on partitioning of metabolites between different organs (source-sink relationships) and the production of secondary metabolites involved in plant-insect interactions. Other examples are the regulation of quality control in protein processing during seed filling and the resource availability during germination and growth of the seedling. Genetics, natural variation, the analysis of plant hormones and other signaling molecules, and -omics technologies such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics are essential expertises used in our research.
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Latest publications
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Comparative Metabolomics and Molecular Phylogenetics of Melon (Cucumis melo, Cucurbitaceae) BiodiversityMetabolites 10 (2020)3. - ISSN 2218-1989 - 26 p.
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Keep Cool and Open Up : Temperature-Induced Stomatal OpeningPlant Physiology 182 (2020)3. - ISSN 0032-0889 - p. 1188 - 1189.
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Metabolomics should be deployed in the identification and characterization of gene-edited cropsThe Plant Journal (2020). - ISSN 0960-7412