The ongoing climate change has put a spotlight on rapid evolutionary processes that could aid species adapt to new environments. However, many questions remain unanswered: What is the genetic architecture traits influencing fitness across environments? Is this genomic architecture predictable? Can we understand genetic constraints across multiple adaptive traits? How is genetic variation lost during extinction?

Illegal logging and timber trade, valued at $50-$150B annually, is estimated to account for 30-50% of all internationally traded timber, cost $5B in lost revenue to governments, and negatively impact biodiversity, climate, and local communities. The Lacey Act fosters forest legality by restricting importation of unlawfully harvested goods into the US. This act requires declaring the harvested species and its country of origin.

A plant’s roots serve as a major line of defense against environmental stress to protect the plant as a whole. Roots of diverse plant species have found ways to deal with stress by devising responses, often within individual cell types, to resist drought, mineral deficiencies, pathogens and other insults that impair plant growth. I will present my lab’s research that uses systems, and developmental biology approaches to interrogate the transcriptional networks that function in response to many of these environmental stresses in tomato and sorghum.