Plants can adapt to various environmental conditions by perceiving intensity and quality of light, direction of gravity, and so on. By elucidating such a stimulus-responsive mechanism, we will be able to modulate the growth of a plant to be optimized for an artificial condition such as in a space station or a plant factory.
We are studying on 1) the molecular bases for a wound-responsive gene expression, 2) the effect of light quality on root gravitropism, and 3) a novel plant growth regulator within a distilled extract from industrial waste biomass.