Research Overview

This lab entertains questions of all sorts bearing on plant growth, plant movements, and plant behaviors in response to their environments. The central focus is the physiological mechanisms cells use to regulate cell expansion and growth of leaves. We are set up to measure cell growth, elongation and volume changes, and osmoregulation. We also measure electrophysiological properties associated with growth. These include measuring ion fluxes, membrane potential, and channel activity using patch clamp methods.

We use a variety of plants and behaviors, from expansion of individual leaves of Arabidopsis, pea and tobacco, to development and posture of corn leaves.

With experiments designed to discover the physiological mechanisms underlying plant cell growth and the regulation of these mechanisms by light, touch, and other factors, we are most interested in asking how plants 'behave' in response to their environment.

Biography

Liz Van Volkenburgh received her B.S. in Botany from Duke University, and her Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from the University of Washington. She worked as a technician at the Smithsonian Institute Botany Department, and at the Duke University Phytotron. Her postdoctoral appointments were at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Lancaster in England, and the University of Washington. Liz has been a faculty member at the University of Washington since 1987, in the Botany and Biology Departments, with an Adjunct appointment in the College of Forest Resources. In 1993-4 she joined the Plant Physiology lab of the University of Groningen in Haren, the Netherlands for a year's sabbatical research.

Selected Publications