Office: Room 407, 17 Lex., Phone: (646) 660-6270, E-mail: Edward_Tucker@baruch.cuny.edu

Edward B. Tucker, Ph.D., University of Calgary (Plant Physiology), studies cell-to-cell transport in plants and is a pioneer in microinjection techniques. He has published numerous book chapters and articles, the later chiefly in Protoplasma and Planta. The United States Department of Agriculture supports his research. He organized an international workshop in microinjection techniques at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA. Dr. Tucker has found support for students to accompany him to the MBL for summer research. He is active in bringing minority speakers to the college. Dr. Tucker is a member of the CUNY Graduate Faculty in Biology/Botany.

RESEARCH

"My research is in the areas of cell-to-cell communication in plants and signal perception in plants. In my 1982 publication, I was the first to define the size of particles that can pass through the plasmodesmata, communication channels between plant cells. Structurally, plasmodesmata were seen to be much larger than gap junctions in animal cells, and thus large molecules were expected to permeate them. My work illustrated that the size of particles passing through plasmodesmata was similar to gap junctions. I developed a method to quantitate transport and have recently published actual rates of diffusion through plasmodesmata for molecular probes.

"I was also the first to illustrate that cytoplasmic streaming does not drive cell-to-cell diffusion. Scientists had assumed that the purpose of streaming was to mix cell contents, required for cell-to-cell diffusion. I showed that when streaming has stopped, cell-to-cell diffusion continues as normal."

Publications 1992-Present