Helen Holmlund
Pepperdine University, CA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Some plants can lose nearly all of their water, sit in a dry, dormant state, and then come back to life when they are rewatered. These are called resurrection plants.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
- Topics
resurrection plants
desiccation tolerance
drought tolerance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Compare water-use anatomy and physiology in hydrated, closely related desiccation-tolerant and non-tolerant ferns and lycophytes across six lineages, to find which traits go with surviving near-complete drying.
- Use micro-computed tomography (microCT), a 3D X-ray imaging method, to track the timing and extent of water recovery in outer tissues of resurrection and non-resurrection plants during drying and rehydration.
- Test whether land-dwelling resurrection ferns recover through root pressure while tree-dwelling (epiphytic) species recover by absorbing water through their leaves.
- Identify traits shared by all desiccation-tolerant ferns, such as keeping their structure intact when dry, by comparing both the sporophyte and gametophyte life stages.
More about the research
Scientists have begun to work out the molecular steps of recovery inside tissues, but much less is known about the whole-plant features that make recovery possible. Examples include how the plant's structure holds together when dry and how water moves back into it. Understanding these features could explain how plants survive drought.
Why it matters
Learning which whole-plant traits let resurrection ferns recover from drying could improve the understanding of plant drought tolerance and guide ecological management of these plants. It may also help in judging whether such traits could be used to develop more drought-tolerant crops. The work also adds to knowledge of how ferns adapted to life on trees.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jacob Suissa
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Ecology & Evolution
Test the Drought-Driven Hypothesis by measuring how vulnerable fern leaves, rhizomes and roots are to drought-induced embolism, the air blockages in water-conducting tubes, and linking this to vascular anatomy at architectural, tissue and cellular scales.
Craig Brodersen
Yale University, CT·Plant Science & Agriculture
Measure guard cell and epidermal cell turgor pressure directly in living leaves, using a laser-induced gas bubble whose collapse rate reveals the pressure inside the cell.
Karolina Heyduk
University of Connecticut, CT·Plant Science & Agriculture·Early-career
Develop a gene-expression-based screening tool to discover and catalog C3+CAM vascular plants, which use both normal and drought-adapted CAM photosynthesis.
The school
Pepperdine University: 1 labs on PI Pages, $11M a year on research, 94 research doctorates a year.
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