How plants sense touch, gravity and other physical forces
Friday, October 21, 2011 - 12:00
in Biology & Nature
At the bottom of plants' ability to sense touch, gravity or a nearby trellis are mechanosensitive channels, pores through the cells' plasma membrane that are opened and closed by the deformation of the membrane. Elisabeth Haswell, Ph.D., a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, is studying the roles these channels play in Arabdopsis plants by growing mutant plants that lack one or more of the 10 possible channel proteins in this species.