Enviornmental Plant Bio. Blog

The lecture entitled “Space…the final frontier…for root phototropism” by John K. Kiss was very interesting and insightful on the development of the study of tropism.  I personally knew nothing of this type of movement before the lecture and was suprised to discover that roots and stems were drawn to/repelled by different types of light in growth.  The upcoming experiments with red light appear as if they will advance the knowledge on this topic greatly since it seems to be a newer realization of both root and stem (+) responses to red light.  Phototropins, seemingly, unique only to plants are extremely interesting to myself seems it has no connection to anything that humans undergo during growth stages.  The upcoming experiments on the STS-121 will provide a large amount of substantial detail to this phenomenon.  In total, I think it’s amazing that this project will be on the next shuttle launch and that the equiptment is now so high tech as to be able to remove, add, and replicate gravity to experiment tropism in all different combinations of light and gravity.  Overall, a very interesting and exciting lecture.  I look forward to reading the analysis of the shuttle experiments.