Plants are constantly exposed to stress, yet they have evolved numerous mechanisms to respond, adapt, and thrive under some of the most hostile conditions. In most cases, the ability to adapt to stress, whether from the environment (abiotic) or predators (biotic), simply requires a "reallocation of resources". For example, under conditions of drought, plants down-regulate growth and development, both being energy-expensive processes, in favor of minimizing water loss. Similarly, when plants are infected by pathogens, the primary goal is to restrict pathogen access to nutrients. This project seeks to understand how plants utilize basic physiological processes to respond to stress. To do this, the project will investigate how biotic stress signaling is activated and regulated, and moreover, how this signaling process is interlinked with general host physiology and plant health. The principal investigator hypothesizes that in a manner similar to humans, plants utilize mechanisms to integrate environmental and pathogen-related stress signaling responses. The goal of this project is to understand how abiotic and biotic stress signaling is co-regulated, and to develop a model of how plants sense the world around them, process these perceived stimuli, and ultimately, survive under a variety of stress conditions. The impact of this work links basic plant health to environment, threats from pathogens, and in total, food security.
The project includes an extensive outreach component. In short, a teaching module will be conducted by graduate and post-doctoral researchers in principal investigator's lab and carried out in collaboration with the Michigan State University Children's Garden and 4H Outreach Program. The major focus will be to educate elementary school children on the relationship(s) between environment, plant health, food, and sustainability. The goal of this outreach is to increase the awareness and understanding of young people of how food, and ultimately human health, is impacted by the environment, and moreover, to illustrate how humans impact the environment.
