Meet the Faculty

Jack Schultz

Director, Bond Life Sciences Center
Professor, Division of Plant Sciences

Phone: 573-882-7957
Fax: 573-884-9395
E-mail: SchultzJC@missouri.edu
Address: 105 Bond Life Sciences Center

Education
A.B., University of Chicago
Ph.D., University of Washington

General Research Themes
Frustrated by the inability of community, physiological, and evolutionary ecology to construct effective generalizations and develop predictive theory, our research has moved in an increasingly mechanistic direction. Our motivation is to understand various ecological and evolutionary phenomena and why the world looks and acts the way it does, but we focus on underlying mechanisms to explain patterns we see in the environment. We believe that ecology must understand mechanisms to be a mature, predictive science and to make contributions to global health. This requires a multidisciplinary approach and a wide range of methods.

Our present research has several major themes:

First, we are interested in interactions between plants and their enemies, especially insects. Because these interactions are strongly influenced by plant chemistry, we have developed a strong focus on natural products chemistry, especially phenolics and glucosinolates, including their activities, regulation of their synthesis, and their ecological significance in a wide range of environmental settings.

Second, we are interested in dynamic ("induced") responses by plants to attack by pests, which are likely to be more important ecologically and evolutionarily than are constitutive traits. Issues we address include how plants perceive and identify attackers, how systemic responses are coordinated by the plant, constraints on dynamic responses, and the community and ecosystem impacts. We want to know how some insects mask their attacks or even downregulate plant defenses; this has led to an interest in the congruence between plants and animals in chemical signaling cascades and mechanisms. We work with the biochemical signals that may be involved in these interactions, including insect secretions and plant hormones.

Third, because many plastic responses arise from gene transcription, we have developed a focus on how the regulation of gene expression relates to plant defense. This is a logical extension of our ecological interests: the (defense) phenotype arises from the interaction between environment and gene expression. It is often (although not solely) at that level that plants first detect and respond to their biotic and abiotic environments. Much of what we do now may be called "biochemical and molecular ecology". Our lab has developed the ability to use all the major tools of functional genomics.

Fourth, our work takes an ecological point of view. We want to know how the influences of plant chemistry and plant responses cascade upward and downward through the ecosystem. This interest includes understanding how overlapping plant responses to multiple stimuli (e.g., microbes, various insects, physical conditions, competitors) may influence plant success and community structure. This work is important to integrated pest management.

Fifth, we're interested in airborne signaling among plants and between plants and insects. Although it is clear that this can occur in the laboratory, it is not clear that it actually happens outdoors, where it matters ecologically. We are seeking collaborations with experts in sensing and engineering to devise means of characterizing volatile plant signals in open air. Recent projects include a study of defense induction and defense "priming" in Arabidopsis exposure to insect-wound-induced green leafy volatiles, and 'self-priming' by airborne signals in poplars.

Our approach
Our research is question- and hypothesis-driven, not system-driven. While Jack and Heidi are particularly fond of woody plants, we try to select systems on the basis of their utility in answering questions. We currently are focusing on Arabidopsis and its herbivores because of the genetic advantages for gene-expression work (a wholly-sequenced genome) and the ability to test functional hypotheses with knockouts/downs. But we also have projects on molecular-chemical-physiological ecology with poplars and grapes and their insects and diseases as well. As access to tools and information grows, we hope to do more things with 'non-model' organisms. We generally aim to take what we see outdoors into the lab to test hypotheses about causal factors under controlled conditions, and then take what we learn back into the field to see if we're right.

Publications

Mewis, I, H.M. Appel, A. Hom, R. Raina and J.C. Schultz. 2005. Major signaling pathways modulate Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) glucosinolate accumulation and response to both phloem feeding and chewing insects. Plant Physiology 138:1149-1162.

Mewis I; Tokuhisa J; Schultz JC; Appel HM; Ulrichs C; Gershenzon J. 2006. Gene expression and glucosinolate accumulation in Arabidopsis thaliana in response to generalist and specialist herbivores of different feeding guilds and the role of defense signaling pathways. Phytochemistry 67: 2450-2462.

Fine, P.V.A., Miller, Z., Mesones, I., Irazuzta, S., Appel, H.M., Stevens, M. H. H., Sääksjärvi, I., Schultz, J.C., and Coley, P.D. 2006. The growth-defense tradeoff and habitat specialization by plants in Amazonian forests. Ecology 87:S150-S162.

Jagadeeswaran G., S. Raina, B. R. Acharya, S. B. Maqbool, S. L. Mosher, H. M. Appel, J. C. Schultz, D. F. Klessig and R. Raina. 2007. Arabidopsis GH3-LIKE DEFENSE GENE 1 is required for accumulation of salicylic acid, activation of defense responses and resistance to Pseudomonas syringae. Plant J 51: 234-46.

Acharya BR, Raina S, Maqbool SB, Jagadeeswaran G, Mosher SL, Appel HM, Schultz JC, Klessig DF, Raina R. 2007. Overexpression of CRK13, an Arabidopsis cysteine-rich receptor-like kinase, results in enhanced resistance to Pseudomonas syringae. Plant J. 50: 488-99.

Frost, CJ, Appel, HM, Carlson, JE, De Moraes, CM, Mescher, MC, Schultz, JC. 2007. Within-plant signalling via volatiles overcomes vascular constraints on systemic signalling and primes responses against herbivores, Ecol. Letters 10: 490-498.

Engelberth J, Seidl-Adams I, Schultz JC, Tumlinson JH. 2007. Insect elicitors and exposure to green leafy volatiles differentially upregulate major octadecanoids and transcripts of 12-oxo phytodienoic acid reductases in Zea mays. Mol Plant-Microbe Interact. 20: 707-716.