Collaborative Research Centre 1644

Phenotypic plasticity in plants

Mechanisms, constraints and evolution

Plants have colonised almost every habitat on earth. They are the dominant organismal kingdom by biomass, and all animal life depends on them. A major feature that has enabled this success is the remarkable ability of plants to adjust their growth and development to different environments. The ability of a given genotype to generate different phenotypes in different environments is termed phenotypic plasticity. Such plasticity is a universal feature of life, and understanding its molecular basis and evolution is a fundamental goal in biology. This understanding has major implications for predicting plant responses to a changing climate and environment and for accelerating plant breeding tailored to specific environments. Our CRC pursues an interdisciplinary research program to tackle this key challenge across multiple scales of biological organization.

To learn more about each project, visit our project pages for clusters A, B and Z.