PAG XXIX Plenary Speakers (2022)
Professor and Director, Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Howard H. and Maryam Newman Chair, Salk Institute, USA
Talk Title: "Fighting Climate Change with Plants"
Presented: Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Moderator: Daryl Somers, Somers Consulting, Fenwick, ON, Canada
Bio:
Joanne Chory has spent more than 30 years using Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering mustard plant, as a model for plant growth. She has pioneered the use of molecular genetics to study how plants alter their size, shape and form to optimize growth and photosynthesis for particular environments. Utilizing plant genetics coupled with biochemical studies has allowed her to determine one of the most complex signaling networks that controls growth and development in response to environmental change.
Chory’s seminal work investigating plants’ molecular and genetic responses to varying environmental conditions – specifically, light and temperature changes – provided the foundation for her team’s current studies of the role of hormones and tissue systems in plant growth and development. This work may inform our understanding of how these processes are regulated in other organisms and has applications in the fields of agriculture and human health.
