This award will be used to partially support the renovation and consolidation of the Plant Growth Facilities of the Plant Biology Laboratory (PBL) at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Research interests, represented by four groups, include: the development and physiology, light regulation of plant development, plant disease resistance, and molecular and genetic mechanisms of growth control. Existing growth facilities are housed in a metal structure inadequate to provide the required functional and environmental conditions to support scientific programs. Renovations will consist of: structural improvements, upgrading the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems, installing casework, new light fixtures and wire racks for plants. Once completed, the different functions of plant preparation, growth, and analysis will be physically separated. The optimized layout of the centralized Plant Growth Facility will provide usable shelf space in the growth rooms, mainly for growing Arabidopsis plants. Specific projects to be conducted in the upgraded facility include: mutant screens under special light conditions, second-generation mutant screens using transgenic plants and weak mutant alleles of known regulatory genes, and large-scale activation-tagging screens to identify new regulatory genes through gain-of-function analyses. In addition, the project will be used for general plant growth and maintenance as required for genetic analyses, mapping purposes and biochemical studies, for the generation of transgenic plants, and for disease-free growth of plants.
