Plant Mechanobiology

Research in the Haswell lab asked 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 ranged in scale from the atomic to the evolutionary and work synergistically to improve our understanding of all living organisms. You can read about our research projects here and our publications are listed here.

The Haswell Lab was defined both by what we studied, and by the environment in which we did our research. We were located in the Biology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. We were also part of the Center for Engineering Mechanobiology. Click here to meet the members of the lab, here for our mission statements and here for archived lab news.

Watch the video below to meet members of the lab, learn about our research, the model organisms and methods we used, and the lab culture!