My research focuses on dissecting the regulatory mechanisms that enable plants to sense and respond to changes in external temperature. Most organisms are exposed to predictable environmental changes such as daily and seasonal fluctuations in day length and temperature cycles. As such, they have evolved to take advantage of an endogenous 24-h timekeeping mechanism known as the circadian clock to keep in-sync with these changes. Research in my lab will focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms of how the circadian clock help plants to sense and respond to temperature stress. We are using functional genomics, genetics and a variety of genome-scale approaches to address these questions. Mechanistic discoveries from my research will contribute to the development of crop cultivars that are better resistant to temperature extremes.
