Plants rapidly adjust their growth in response to environmental challenges—competing neighbors, changing light conditions, temperature fluctuations. The hormone gibberellin (GA) plays a central role in coordinating these adaptive responses, but fundamental questions remain about how GA perception and signaling operate in dynamic environments. 

What we study: 
We investigate GA signaling mechanisms using shade avoidance as our primary experimental system. When plants detect shade from neighbors (sensed as changes in light quality), they activate GA-dependent growth responses to outcompete their neighbors. This provides a tractable model to dissect how hormone signals are perceived, transduced, and integrated with environmental cues. 

Our approach combines: 
Molecular genetics and mutant analysis
Live-cell imaging and protein localization studies
Transcriptomics and bioinformatics
Comparative approaches across plant species

Broader questions:
 Beyond shade responses, we're interested in how GA signaling systems achieve specificity—how plants coordinate precise developmental and environmental responses through shared signaling components. We also explore how these mechanisms have evolved across plant lineages.