My research interests focus on understanding the function and regulation of vacuolar autophagy in plant abiotic stress responses. Autophagy is a pathway for uptake of proteins, protein aggregates, other macromolecules, and organelles into the vacuole for degradation during environmental stress and senescence. Plants defective in this pathway are more sensitive to stress conditions and show premature leaf senescence. We are studying the effects of loss or increase in autophagy on plant stress tolerance, the transcriptional regulation of auotphagy-related genes, and the signaling pathways involved in its activation. We are also interested in the substrate specificity of autophagic degradation and have identified an autophagy-related pathway that functions in RNA salvage.