Elliot M. Meyerowitz

Meyerowitz and his laboratory study how plants grow and develop.  Much of their work uses the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which their lab and others developed as a model system for plant biology in the 1980s.  In the 1980s and 1990s they established the genetic and molecular basis for organ specification in flower development, with the ABC model of flower development. Subsequent molecular identification of many of the genes involved has allowed a substantial understanding of the gene regulatory networks that underlie flower development.  In the 1990s the Meyerowitz lab were the first to clone plant hormone receptors, those for ethylene, leading to a detailed understanding of plant responses to this gas, and to work in other laboratories that has identified the reception mechanisms for a great many plant growth and signaling molecules.  In the 1990s and 2000s they identified plant peptide signaling pathways and mechanisms, leading to the understanding that peptides act as the predominant signaling system between plant cells.  In the 2000s and 2010s they pioneered computational modeling of plant growth and pattern formation with special attention to the shoot meristem, the set of stem cells that makes the aboveground parts of plants.  This has led to their current work that shows how a combination of chemical and physical signals between plant stem cells organizes the stem cell niche, and creates the patterns of cells, tissues, and organs that comprise the entire organism.