Agricultural and Life Sciences (IFAS)
Space Plants Lab
Led by Robert J. Ferl · Horticultural Sciences
What we study
The lab studies how plants adapt to space environments, focusing on Arabidopsis thaliana. They grow plants on the International Space Station to understand microgravity's effects on biology.
What working here is like
- Wet lab
- Plants
- Project
- 1
- Papers
- 5
Current projects
Lunar Plant Biology
The lab studies how plants grow and adapt in space environments.
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Suborbital spaceflight reveals rapid changes in gene expression accompanying the transition to and from space
2026 · npj Microgravity
Tracks gene changes in plants during a suborbital spaceflight.
- Hypobaric Resilience of Matrix Polysaccharide Biosynthesis in Plants
2026 · Plant Direct
Tests how plants change their cell walls in low-pressure space environments.
Show 3 more papersShow fewer
- The long arc of scientists in spaceflight: scientists flying with their experiments
2026 · npj Microgravity
Shows how scientists flying with experiments improves space research.
- GLARE: discovering hidden patterns in spaceflight transcriptome using representation learning
2025 · npj Microgravity
Creates a tool to find hidden patterns in spaceflight gene data.
- Simulated Microgravity Enhances Germ Tube Elongation by Golovinomyces cichoracearum on Cucurbita pepo and Arabidopsis thaliana Leaves
2025 · Phytopathology
Finds that a fungus grows faster on plants in simulated space conditions.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Robert J. Ferl hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.