[1][2][3] She is a professor in the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (PMCB)[4] Program, Horticultural Sciences Department, and Genetics Institute at University of Florida.
Koch's lab is best known for its research on sugar-responsive gene expression and the capacity for this process to alter form and function of plants.
Her group thus focuses on genes that affect sucrose metabolism, its contribution to sugar signaling, and its partitioning to different end products.
projects are testing hypotheses for carbon-partitioning and gene expression in developing maize ovaries from floral differentiation to kernel harvest, and for involvement of key genes in cell wall biosynthesis at strategic stages of development (e.g. root-hair and pollen-tube elongation, early phases of kernel differentiation, and growth of seedlings).
Koch’s “feast and famine” framework for regulating the expression of genes forms the basis for understanding the responses of plant organs to sugar signaling to optimize resource allocation.