Plant Biology
Facilities & Environment
The Plant Biology PhD Program is centered in
the Biology Department
at Washington University. Though a diverse department of cell
biologists, developmental biologists, neurobiologists, population
biologists and microbiologists, approximately one-third of the
Biology faculty study photosynthetic organisms. Like all PhD programs
in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, the Plant
Biology Program is interdepartmental and includes faculty from
other Departments (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Engineering, Anthropology).
Members of the Donald
Danforth Plant Science Center or Missouri
Botanical Garden who hold adjunct faculty appointments in
a University department are also members of the Plant Biology
Program.
Facilities
- Plant growth:
Both the Biology Department and the Danforth Plant Science Center have
modern greenhouses, walk-in growth rooms and reach-in growth chambers,
providing ample space for growing plants in controlled environments.
Facilities for tissue culture and plant regeneration are also available in
both institutions.
- Microscopy and imaging:
The microscopy facility in the Biology
Department at Washington University supports researchers needing confocal microscopy, computational
optical sectioning microscopy, scanning electron microscopy
or transmission electron microscopy. Numerous individual labs
also have light and fluorescence microscopes.
The Danforth Plant Science Center Integrated
Microscopy Facility directed by Dr. Howard Berg supports
researchers needing confocal light microscopy, multi-photon
fluorescence microscopy or electron microscopy, including cryo-EM.
- Biochemistry and Proteomics:
Protein biochemistry and analysis
of macromolecular complexes are areas in which Plant Biology Program
Faculty have noteworthy expertise. Nearly a dozen FPLC (Fast Protein
Liquid Chromatography) and HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography)
machines are utilized in laboratories of the Biology Department
alone. The
Washington University Center for Biomedical and Bioorganic Mass
Spectrometry, the
Washington University High Resolution NMR Facility, and
the
Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry Laboratories (PNACL) at Washington University support research
requiring protein analysis, identification and sequencing. At
the Danforth Plant Science Center the Mass spectrometry and
Bioseparations Facility
also has state-of-the-art equipment for protein purification and
mass spectrometry.
- DNA sequencing:
Automated DNA sequencing is
provided as a service in the Biology Department and at the
Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry Laboratories (PNACL).
- Botanical Collections:
The Herbarium
at the Missouri Botanical Garden contains over five million specimens and is one of
the finest collections of botanical specimens in the world.
Life in St. Louis
Saint Louis is a great place
to live. There are the wonderful ethnic restaurants, music venues,
theaters, and sports teams one expects of a major city, yet St.
Louis has the feel of a "big town", with numerous neighborhoods,
each with its distinctive styles and flavors. Compared
with the east and west coasts or Chicago, the
cost of living is
low and students can live comfortably on their stipends. Housing is so affordable that many of our students
buy houses rather than rent apartments.
For a collection of St. Louis links that reflect the diversity
of what our town has to offer,
click here.
