BTI Awarded Numerous Grants

The Heck lab has won one of only three awards from the ARSX 2020 Competition, which awards proposals that address disruptive agricultural or livestock pests and pathogens in an innovative manner with potential for scalable results. The team aims to develop a real-time immunization method to modify plant traits including, but not limited to, those to fight pest or pathogen attacks.

Cardenolides, a group of compounds present in milkweed, have a plethora of medical applications, most notably in treating heart failure and arrhythmias. However, commercial production of cardenolides is hindered by the limited information of their biosynthetic pathways. The Jander Lab plans to utilize preliminary genetic data to conduct experiments that will shed light on the biosynthetic pathways of cardenolides in milkweed; the knowledge of these metabolic processes will allow the selective breeding of milkweed to increase cardenolide output and enable the investigation of the medical potency of other milkweed metabolites.

Cultivated potato is a very important non-grain food crop that faces insect pests such as the Colorado potato beetle. While cultivated potato has no genetic resistance to the beetle, the Jander lab has identified resistance genes in wild tomato and wild potato species that can be used to improve cultivated potato. This project seeks to discover more resistance genes in wild tomato and wild potato species, and explore the resistance mechanism and viability of transformed cultivated potato against the Colorado potato beetle. Ultimately, this project seeks to expand agricultural productivity by expanding crop resistance to pests.

Jasmonates are a class of plant hormone that play an essential role in defenses when a plant is wounded. In this project, the Jander Lab will investigate the variation of defense mechanisms in maize in response to jasmonate signaling. Using maize plants, the lab will study genomic data, utilize gene cloning, and perform multiple bio-assays to gain insight on the function, detection and biosynthetic pathways of these hormones.

This project explores the relation between form and function in the nucleus, which is a compartment inside the cell that contains and organizes an organism’s hereditary material in the form of DNA. The team will use bioengineering techniques and comparative approaches to understand the physical characteristics of nuclei in the animal and plant kingdoms, using microscopes to examine how isolated nuclei and cells move through tiny tunnels. This project will help elucidate the influence of the environment on genome function and ultimately on plant and animal traits.

Pear psylla are insect pests of pear trees that have three distinct adult life stages: summerform, diapausing winterform and post-diapause winterform. Although changes in behaviors and phenotypes associated with the different life stages are well-documented, the timing for these behavioral changes and mechanisms controlling behaviors are not currently understood. This project will study which genes are turned on during biological processes such as egg development, reproduction, and immunity to help improve management of this pest.

Insects that spread diseases cause enormous economic losses and are a fundamental challenge for sustainable increases in food production. The AgriVectors working group will develop a database that includes data from multiple insects, plant pathogens and plant hosts to enable the development of technologies to target and control pathogens that cause diseases in multiple species of plants. This public database will first be used to help control potato zebra chip disease, which is caused by the same bacterium that causes citrus greening disease.

This project seeks to uncover details of Rubisco, which is an enzyme involved in photosynthesis, to understand how its expression or assembly can be altered to improve photosynthetic efficiency in maize. Such an improvement could expand the productivity of maize growth and improve the environmental and economic impact of the crop.

Plants such as corn, sorghum and sugar cane undergo a special kind of photosynthesis, called C4 photosynthesis, which allows them to turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into sugars much more efficiently than most other plants. This project seeks to examine the role and parameters of the enzyme Rubisco as it pertains to this carbon capture mechanism. By streamlining the photosynthetic mechanism, this projects seeks to ultimately reduce the resources required to grow maize and other crops.

Tomato yields are decimated by high temperatures (exceeding 40°C) and geminiviruses. In the midst of a changing climate, this project aims to discover the relationship between the effects of heat and viral infection on tomatoes to provide growers with heat-resistant and virus-resistant germplasm. The Strickler Lab strives to examine the relationship between heat tolerance and Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) resistance in tomatoes, and identify the genes involved in these phenotypes.

Basil produces many important metabolites, such as aroma metabolites that contribute to its rich taste and anthocyanin pigments. The plant is tetraploid, which means that it has four copies of the same genome, which can be divided into sub-genomes. The Strickler lab hopes to investigate the varying contributions of these sub-genomes to basil compounds’ biosynthetic pathways by observing aroma and pigment, as well as the interplay of homologous chromosomes with regards to metabolite production. This study will help future efforts of selective breeding to produce the most favorable basil plants.