Research in the Haswell lab asks how green organisms sense and respond to physical forces. Mechanoperception, the fundamental process by which a physical stimulus is transduced into a biochemical response, is ancient, universal, and critical for cellular function of organisms across the evolutionary tree. Touch, hearing, pain, heart development, and blood volume are all regulated by mechanical forces in animals. Plants must sense gravity, water availability, pathogens, wind, and soil­–all while regulating the internal forces that govern cell shape and tissue morphogenesis. We want to know how plants accomplish these feats, how evolution has shaped their strategies, and how we might exploit these processes to address today’s most pressing global challenges. Our approaches range in scale from the atomic to the evolutionary and work synergistically to improve our understanding of all living organisms.

The Haswell Lab is defined both by what we research, and by the environment in which we do our research. See haswelllab.org for more information!

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