Knowledge gained by such studies can be used to control both mammalian and plant pests. Our primary interest concerns the activities of cytokines as mediators of nonspecific host defense mechanisms. Cytokines are major immunoregulatory molecules, produced by macrophages, which act as molecular orchestrators of host defense mechanisms against a variety of environmental insults. The exquisite action of cytokines in fine-tuning and controlling the immune response led to my hypothesis that these molecules have been highly conserved through evolution. Students will be working in the areas of classical biochemistry and molecular immunology.
Land plants are sessile organisms.
Because they can not move from their location to avoid harsh environmental conditions, plants have highly regulated cellular mechanisms, primarily cell division and cell elongation, to modify growth patterns of both root and shoot organs. For example, during seedling development, plants repress the formation of leaf organs if light has not been perceived. Another example is how a plant growing in phosphate-depleted soil will initiate and develop a large number of lateral roots near a source of phosphate. Current studies in the laboratory use molecular and genetic tools to understand the contribution of cell division to the regulation of organ growth. Cell division activity is being analyzed during photomorphogenesis of seedlings in the plant model system Arabidopsis thaliana .