Very nice video, Geoff! Great job using visuals to tell your story and to show how the results from your research look.

Great job Geoff. Your research has great potential for agriculture, biofuels and plant based pharmaceuticals.

Thanks Judy! I agree – manipulating the stress response could improve yield of both crops, which are exposed to many stresses, and for pharmaceutical production, where the responses could be eliminated or turned down, due to the sterile nature of the production environment.

I really like your video and the unusual (yet effective!) organization of your poster. I am really interested in your definition of stress, and use of mechanical wounding to investigate stress response. How does the type of stress effect the response over the long-term? Also, do you see rapid stress response as being more or less important in relation to the many global issues that you mention in your intro? Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Julia! The type of stress has a huge effect on the long-term response. For example cold-stressed plants accumulate proline for freezing protection, plants being eaten by herbivores produce toxic metabolites like glucosinolates, and heat stressed plants close stomata and wilt to limit gas exchange and reduce surface area.
In terms of the importance of the more general rapid stress response vs the more specific long-term response, I would say it depends on the situation. If a crop is consistently limited by a single stress (i.e drought for Somali farmers), then engineering responses for that specific stress would be the better route. However, most crops are exposed to a range of stresses in an unpredictable fashion over the growing season. Modifying the general response may be a way to bring a level of resistance to all of these stresses. This approach would be much cheaper and simpler than attempting to incorporate specific resistance traits for all of the various stresses a plant might encounter.

Nice job Geoff!

Thanks Tiffany!

Great job Geoff. Your video is top notch and the poster is clear and accessible to all audiences. On the humorous side, I’m picturing a cartoon with a plant on a couch with you; your name tag reads “Geoff Benn, Plant Psychologist”. Plant: “Doc, I’m under all kinds of stress!”. You: “Relax, I can help.”

Very interesting Mr. Benn. Plant Science has certainly come a long way since I received my Botany BS Degree back in 1980. To be able to do the type of research, with the intricate manipulations with genes and recombinant luciferase, is work we dreamed about back then; now it’s so common you don’t even mention the use of it in your video.

I can see your research helping in many ways, especially with global warming coming upon our planet. Our world’s oceans will be rising, major ocean currents will be altered, which in turn will result in climate changes worldwide. Earth’s Biosphere will be subject to various stressors never seen in our lifetimes; in my opinion – it’s already begun.

I envision your research leading to the development of new crops, genetically engineered to respond to these new “global warming” stress factors. Factors such has higher average temperatures, lower/higher rainfall rates (depending on locale), and higher mineral content in soils and water. I only hope we can develop new crops before it’s too late.

One last note – there’s one other stressor I did not see mentioned. Some plants respond to “Touch”. I’m sure that you have heard of Mimosa Pudica, the “Sensitive Plant” – it responds to any sort of touch stimuli by folding up its leaves and then drooping downwards. Fascinating plant, that one.