Plants must constantly balance growth and reproduction with the need to survive environmental stress. Disease, heat, and physical challenges from their surroundings can all threaten plant fitness, yet plants cannot move to escape these conditions. Plant cells cope with these challenges using dynamic, subcellular compartments called biomolecular condensates. Unlike membrane-bound organelles, these compartments form by temporarily concentrating specific molecules together without surrounding physical membranes, allowing cells to rapidly reorganize gene activity, gene products, and stress responses. Although much is known about how condensates form, far less is known about how they control whole-organism traits like growth, resilience, and survival. This project will study a newly discovered class of condensates in the model plant Arabidopsis that contain proteins in the Guanylate-Binding-Protein Like (GBPL) GTPase family. The team will determine how these condensates help plants respond to environmental challenges such as infection, physical stress, and high temperature. Understanding the fundamentals of how living cells use these dynamic molecular assemblies to coordinate complex behaviors serves the national interest, laying a foundation for biotechnology strategies to improve crop resilience under increasingly variable environmental conditions, benefiting agriculture, food security, and economic stability. In addition, the project will train undergraduate and graduate studen