Gehring Lab

$3 Million grant will underwrite bioengineering of orphan crops as a method for enhancing global food security
 

Researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Mary Gehring created a new way to study a family of enzymes that control gene expression in plants. Their method reveals how these enzymes affect key decisions in plant development, including when to produce flowers.

Some of the most important tools in researchers’ toolkits are the model organisms they use to study biological questions. How do researchers decide which species, out of the millions that exist, to develop as models? Whitehead Institute researchers have had a hand in establishing and promoting the use of several model organisms over the years.

Researchers at Whitehead Institute have made important discoveries that have uncovered the prevalence, characteristics, and functions of regulatory RNAs. Their work has transformed researchers’ understanding of gene regulation and revealed a complex, elegant system that tailors gene expression for each cell type and tissue.

If we imagine the cell as an orchestra, with many musicians who each have a small part to play, then what conducts all of these musicians and keeps them organized and harmonized as they play a symphony?

A proposed project would provide a way to store carbon indefinitely in the tissues of specially engineered plants.

Maintaining food security in the face of climate change is a complex, multifaceted problem of global importance, and so researchers are tackling it from many different angles. Whitehead Institute Member Mary Gehring is starting to work on ways to engineer crops that can better survive the effects of climate change and continue to produce high yields with high nutritional value.

Nymphaea thermarum is a tiny waterlily with big potential as a research tool to learn about the evolution of flowering plants. The fact that this research can happen is quite remarkable, because N. thermarum went extinct in the wild around 2009.