BIO309/409 Plant Physiology

You joined in Biology at the great moment as Biology is at THE GREAT Turning Point. Over the past decade, advances in experimental technologies have greatly expanded our ability to collect biological data—from genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes, and epigenomes to detailed images of living organisms. These approaches allow us to examine biological processes across scales, from whole organisms to individual tissues and cells, and across developmental stages and environmental conditions. The challenge is increasingly not only how to generate these data, but also how to interpret them: How do we connect molecular patterns to biological mechanisms, and how do those mechanisms explain what an organism does?

The rapid development and widespread availability of Artificial Intelligence (Super Intelligence) are opening new opportunities to explore these questions. AI-assisted approaches can help us analyze complex datasets, quantify images, navigate scientific literature, and formulate testable hypotheses. Yet finding a pattern is not the same as explaining a mechanism. Meaningful interpretation still requires biological knowledge, careful experimentation, reproducible analysis, and critical judgment.

This makes it an especially exciting time to study Plant Physiology—the study of how plants function, grow, and respond to their environment. In this course, we will examine the mechanisms underlying water and mineral uptake, transport, photosynthesis, respiration, metabolism, growth, and development. We will explore how plants sense and respond to light, hormones, and environmental stresses, connecting processes at the molecular and cellular levels to the functioning of tissues, organs, and the whole plant. We will also understand how the crops have been domesticated and how we can better breed future crops for better climate resilience through de novo domestication and precision agriculture. Throughout the course, we will consider how genetic information and gene regulation contribute to plant traits, and how tools such as CRISPR and base editing can help us investigate and modify plant function.

Through the associated laboratory sessions, we will take advantage of our location in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, to connect classroom learning with plants and their real-world applications. Planned visits to the Lincoln Park Conservatory and nearby headquarters of companies in plant-related industries will provide opportunities to explore plant diversity, connect plant form with physiological function, and learn how plant science informs biotechnology, agriculture, and industry.

Through the associated laboratory sessions, we will take advantage of our location in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, to connect classroom learning with plants and their real-world applications. Planned visits to the Lincoln Park Conservatory and nearby headquarters of companies in plant-related industries will provide opportunities to explore plant diversity, connect plant form with physiological function, and learn how plant science informs biotechnology, agriculture, and industry.

Lectures and laboratories will bring together core plant biology, hands-on experimentation, imaging, and data analysis. We will critically use AI tools to investigate plant images and phenotypes, explore gene-expression data, evaluate scientific literature, and support reproducible computational work, including AI-assisted coding. Responsible and ethical AI use will be an integral part of this work. Guided by the theme “Real Plants, Real Data, Critical Thinking,” the course will emphasize asking meaningful questions, evaluating evidence, and developing hypotheses that connect genotype to phenotype—skills relevant to plant science, biotechnology, agriculture, and data-driven biology.