Understanding Plant Movement
As sessile organisms, plants are unable to move to in response to changing environmental conditions. However, plants have derived growth-mediated strategies (termed "tropisms") to best position the plants to grow successfully. The VDB lab specifically looks at how plants grow and respond to light (phototropism) and gravity (gravitropism) and how these two growth strategies interact to determine the morphology of the plant. This research is of special interest to NASA, who wants to understand how plants will grow in conditions of reduced gravity, such as on the Moon or Mars!