Growth cabinets for plant cell biology

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Research on plant growth and development is benefitting tremendously from the adoption of model genetic systems such as Arabidopsis thaliana. These plants have a compact growth habit that permits in-laboratory Petri dish culture on agar-based nutrients. Growth chambers that permit a controlled environment are critical for laboratories using model genetic systems such as Arabidopsis. The Wasteneys laboratory is at the forefront of discovering the mechanisms that control the shape of plants and specializes in microscopy-based analysis of cellular events and growth of living seedlings. The vast majority of our studies involve plate-based culture of Arabidopsis seedlings and we are now planning high throughput molecular-genetic screening programs that greatly increase the demand for culture chambers. Our specialization in the use of temperature-sensitive mutants requires a tightly controlled growth environment. Currently, this work is severely constrained because we do not own appropriate growth chambers fro plate culture and can only access one aging rental chamber located in a separate building. In order to carry out our planned research efficiently and with minimal disturbance to the controlled growth conditions we need to house our plant cultures in the lab, in close proximity to the microscopes that we use to measure growth and other developmental characteristics of our transgenic and or mutant seedlings. This acquisition of new equipment has been configured into the design of our new laboratory, which is currently under construction as part of a government stimulus package-supported renewal of the Biosciences building.