Burch-Smith joins Danforth Plant Science Center as principal investigator

The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced that Tessa Burch-Smith, PhD, has joined the Danforth Center as Associate Member and Principal Investigator. Her research is focused on how plant cells communicate with each other through intercellular pores called plasmodesmata (PD). Plants are actually a vast network of interconnected cells that exchange essential molecules like sugars, proteins and RNA through PD during growth and development. Prior to Burch-Smith joining the Center she served as associate professor, Department of Biochemistry and Cellular & Molecular Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her PhD in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, and earned her BS in biology and chemistry at the University of the West Indies in Barbados.