Plant Biology
Plants are foundational organisms in both our terrestrial ecosystems and our food chains. Whitehead Institute researchers are shedding light on the intricacies of plant biology in order to provide insights into plant development that could contribute to improved crop yield and global food security; discover plant-derived medicines and other valuable natural products; and improve our fundamental understanding of biological processes, including gene regulation and protein folding.
Cockscomb plant.
Len Rubenstein/Whitehead Institute
The Institute has made many impactful contributions to the field of plant biology. In past years, our researchers helped to establish Arabidopsis thaliana as a primary model organism for plant research. Now, they are discovering the intricacies of gene regulation and its heritability, and providing many important insights into the biology of plants and the ways that plant genetics and biochemistry can be harnessed or altered to help plants adapt to climate change.
Rebecca Povilus
Investigating plant development is necessary in order to understand our food chain. The cornerstone of the human diet is a plant tissue called endosperm, which regulates the flow of nutrients to an embryo in a seed much like the human placenta moderates nutrition flow from a mother to a fetus. We eat endosperm in many forms including cereal crops, corn, and rice, and insights into endosperm biology can shed light on questions relevant to global food supply, such as how to increase seed size and nutritional content.
Jing-Ke Weng/Whitehead Institute
In our researchers’ investigations of plant development, one important focus is how plants pass on traits epigenetically. Epigenetic inheritance occurs when offspring inherit traits not through genes themselves, but rather through chemical tags that attach to DNA and regulate gene expression--or through other heritable forms of gene regulation. Epigenetic inheritance is common in plants, and contributes to traits such as seed size and the time it takes a seed to mature, both matters relevant to agriculture.
Len Rubenstein/Whitehead Institute
Crop plants provide the basis of our global food supply–humans either eat them, or eat animals that eat them. Climate change is increasingly forcing these plants to grow in conditions for which they are not well adapted, including high temperatures, drought, and high soil salinity. Our researchers are working to make crop plants more resilient against climate change. One such project focuses on underutilized crops such as the legume pigeon pea that provide nutrition to certain regions but have not yet become globally distributed. By increasing the genetic diversity of these crops, researchers can identify genetic variants that make the plants more tolerant of changing growing conditions.
