Daphne Goring

Daphne Goring is a Professor in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology. She completed her Bachelor's degree at Trent University, her Master's degree at McGill University, and her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto.

The Goring Lab's overall research interests are to understand how plant cells communicate through signal transduction pathways to regulate plant growth and development. Their research is conducted primarily in Arabidopsis thaliana and closely-related Brassicaceae species. The main areas that they investigate are the signalling pathways and cellular responses that regulate compatible and self-incompatible pollen-pistil interactions. These are critical recognition systems for selecting compatible pollen to be supported by the pistil to enable successful fertilization. By studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms of these recognition systems, the research group has identified several new protein players including receptor kinases, downstream signalling proteins, and cellular response including secretion and autophagy. Typically, the genes encoding these players belong to multi-gene families, and so, we also use functional genomics approaches to characterize these gene families, identify novel plant signalling networks, and determine the biological processes that are regulated by these networks.

In 2011, Professor Goring was honoured as a 'Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science'.