Ensminger Lab
Molecular Plant Physiology,
Global Change Biology & Photosynthesis
Department of Biology
University of Toronto Mississauga
Research on the Biology of Trees, Global Change & Photosynthesis
Our goal: To better understand tree responses to environmental change for productive and resilient forests – From molecular to leaf, species and ecosystem levels.
We investigate the physiological, biochemical and molecular mechanisms that control photosynthesis, growth and resilience of trees to changing environmental conditions
We are located in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
Areas of Research
See the list of current projects and find more details about our ongoing research
Environmental stress physiology of plants
How do plants adapt and acclimate to environmental change?
Tomorrows forests
How will heat, drought and pests impact tree growth in the future? Will warming increase the forest carbon sink?
Response of photosynthesis and carbon metabolism to low temperature
Research in conifers to understand low temperature acclimation and freezing resistance
Lab News
First Field Campaign of the year!
This week marked our first venture this year into the field for the FastPheno project ! Collection of drone data as well as ground truthing hyperspectral data, fluorescence were done, as well as needle tissue sampled for pigment analysis. There was still snow on the ground but that didn’t stop us from completing measurements. This is a crucial time for…
Snow Days, S-“no” Problem
UTM was hit with a big snow storm today, which reminded us here at the lab that it is still winter, despite the higher than normal temperatures this year! The environmental signals used by trees to sense seasonality and trigger dormancy and development of cold acclimation, are the decrease in temperature and the length of photoperiod during the autumn. Increasing…
Happy New Year from the Ensminger Lab!
Happy holidays and happy new year! It is the first week back from the winter break and in this new year, we hope to accomplish more of our resolutions and research goals !
Bridget wins the Forest Ecophysiology Oral Presentation Award at AGU 2022!
Congrats to Bridget on the award for her oral presentation at the 2022 AGU conference ! In her presentation, titled: “Coming in hot: increased carbon losses and reduced growth under warming in two genotypes of field-grown white spruce” ! Bridget presented her work on climate change impacts and the effect of warming in different white spruce genotypes. In her talk she…
Exciting paper accepted this month in G3!
The Douglas-fir transcriptome has gotten a great new update! The paper “A long-read and short-read transcriptomics approach provides the first high-quality reference transcriptome and genome annotation for Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas-fir) ” was accepted early this month. With conifer transcriptomes still needing to be refined and completed, this paper provides a novel approach which led to a new reference transcriptome and genome annotation for Douglas fir and…
