ADAPT
Plant Adaptation
Until 2023: FUNCT – Functional Plant Biology
Programme Area “Plant Adaptation” (PA ADAPT) aims to obtain a mechanistic understanding of regulatory networks that enable plants to adapt to their environment.
Environmental stresses are a major cause of crop losses, and these will be exacerbated by climate change. To mitigate the vulnerability of horticulture to climate variation and associated environmental constraints we will need crop varieties, species or rootstocks with improved tolerance to stress conditions. In order to accelerate plant breeding, and the rational engineering of more resilient crop varieties, it is necessary to understand the molecular pathways underlying plant adaptation.
There are three Research Groups within the Programme Area: RG ADAPT1 "Temperature sensing in plants" (former RG FUNCT.1), RG FUNCT.2 "Plant metabolism" and RG ADAPT.JR "Stress and Developmental integration" (former FUNCT.JR). Each of them contributes its individual strong research profile to the overall direction of the Programme Area, there are overarching themes and unifying approaches to understand plant processes on a mechanistic level.
Plant adaptation is a broad area, and work in the department is focussed on two key aspects: (1) How do plants sense and integrate temperature information into their development? (2) What is the role of metabolism in responding to biotic and abiotic stress? Work is interdisciplinary, using a wide-range of approaches including induced genetic screens, natural variation, proteomics, gene expression analysis and bioinformatics. We have in-house next generation sequencing capability, which greatly facilitates genome-wide analysis of transcription factor binding and gene expression programmes. We welcome applications from graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are interested in joining the department.
ADAPT 1
Temperature sensing in plants
FUNCT 2
Plant metabolism
ADAPT.JR
Stress and Developmental Integration
Former research groups
