Hong Ma

Our lab studies mechanisms regulating plant reproductive development under favorable or stressful conditions. In particular, we are interested in learning about genes that are important for promoting plant development under drought and high temperatures since both stresses are frequently encountered by crops and wild plants and impact both agricultural yields and ecosystem health. We use molecular genetic analyses to probe gene functions and employ a variety of other approaches, including comparative genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, as well as cell biological examination of protein location to identify and characterize gene functions. We further conduct molecular evolutionary analyses of major plant families with crops such as maize, rice, wheat, soybean, tomato, potato, canola, cucumber, and apple, including evolutionary processes at the levels of the organism, morphology, physiology, genome, and gene family. These large-scale investigations are aimed at understanding shared and specialized genes and regulatory pathways of plant development and responses to environmental changes.