On March 9th, 2006, Dr. John Z. Kiss from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio gave an interesting lecture in Ohio Wesleyan University. The part I liked the best was information on tropism. Okada and Shimuru (Japanese Scientist), studied the effect of white light on root and shoot. In the experiment,white light was applied on a plant, as a result, the shoot grew toward the light while the root grew away frm the light. There ar three type of tropism: thigmotropism, phototropism and gravitropism. Stem shows positive phototropism and negative gravitropism. While, the roots show positive gravitropism and negative phototropism.

It was also fascinating to hear that Dr. Kiss is collabarting with NASA in his research. He mentioned that microgravity as an unique opportunity. For NASA, this is a long term space flght as plant system is support for life, and if life is to exist in universe, then green house is vital. As for Dr. Kiss, microgravity is used to study an important problem in plant biology and this project will help better understand how plant integrate.

This was an overall, interesting and worthwhile lecture.