Environmental Conservation & Plant Biology

Plants are crucial to human wellbeing—as sources of food, as the basis of many current and potential drugs, and for limiting and mitigating climate change. Our plant biology researchers are driving advancements that hold the promise of major practical impact on agriculture, conservation, and medical treatment.

Mary Gehring, for example, uses plant-based research to learn how factors beyond DNA can change a gene’s expression in ways that cause disease. She is also applying her path breaking work on plant epigenetics to create a series of improved seed crops that have substantial nutritional content and are able to thrive in a changing climate.

Learn more about our work on Plant Biology—as well as related research in the realms of Genetics & Genomics, Infectious Disease, and Protein Form & Function.