Epigenetic Control of Meiotic Recombination in Maize Meiotic recombination is a major force of genetic variability in the natural world. Recombination creates new combinations of alleles which creates new phenotypes. Control of recombination machinery allows design of...
Development of a Fluorescence-Based Approach to Visualize Subunit Stoichiometry and Protein-Protein Interactions at the Single-Molecule Level Biological systems contain complex networks of protein interactions, making it difficult to discern the role of specific...
Characterization of tomato lines with CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutations in immunity-associated genes Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst), or bacterial speck disease, causes unsightly blemishes on tomato that make the fruits unsellable. Better understanding the...
Characterizing the Role of AM1 and MET1 in Early Meiosis via Virus Induced Gene Silencing Understanding the constituents and the mechanisms of meiosis in plants could reveal major implications regarding plant development. The majority of genetic diversity is generated...
Graft Recovery in Tomato Seedlings Plant grafting is the process of surgically combining separate plant parts so that they grow as a single individual one. It commonly involves joining a genotypically distinct root system (‘rootstock’) with a shoot (‘scion’). In...
Genomic Analysis of NLR and PR Genes in Coffea Arabica and Its Ancestral Parents Coffee is one of the world’s most widely consumed beverages and an economically important crop for both its growers and its processors. Commercially grown coffee is usually one of two...
“Exploring Novel Strategies for Aphid Pest Control” Aphids, comprised of 4,000 species, are serious agricultural and forestry pests. Aphids can damage plants by directly sucking plant phloem sap, vectoring plant viruses, and providing a hotbed for growth of sooty mold...
“Examining the regulation of herbivore-induced defense genes in maize” Project Summary: Maize, one of the most common staple food crops, is susceptible to several major pests on the field. As a defense mechanism against insect herbivory, maize...
“Improving Genotypic Data Storage Using The Hadoop Cluster” Project Summary: Genotypic data is the perfect example of a data type that can grow so large that it becomes difficult to store and query in an efficient and reliable way. Genotypic data is...
“Functional Analysis of a Putative UDP-Glycosyltransferase Involved in the Biosynthesis of Cardiac Glucosides in Erysimum cheiranthoides” Project summary: Cardiac glycosides are a class of defense-related plant metabolites that inhibit animal Na+,...
“Comparative Metabolomics Reveals a Species-Specific Accumulation of Ascarosides in Nematodes” Project Summary: Nematodes, also known as roundworms, are one of the world’s most abundant organisms in the soil and profoundly impact global crop production....
“Aphid Produced Auxin in the Response of Arabidopsis thaliana to Aphids” Project Summary: Aphids are one of the most abundant order of sap sucking pests interacting with agricultural crops. My mentor discovered that one of the components in aphid saliva is...
“Developing a Data Comparison Tool for Musabase and MGIS Using the BrAPI Interface” Project Summary: The Mueller Lab has developed a breeding database for bananas, known as Musabase for the purpose of helping breeders to create new varieties of crops for...
“Analysis of Iochroma cyaneum Gene Families” Project Summary: Gene duplication and loss is an important force driving the evolution of species. The resulting gene families are an essential aspect to understanding functional differences between species. We...
“Assessment of the Role of the NOR and NOR-LIKE 1 Genes in Tomato Ripening” Project Summary: During the internship, we studied the function of NOR (NON-RIPENING) and NOR-LIKE 1 genes and their effect on tomato ripening. Tomatoes are a crucial cash crop to...
“A QTL Containing Maize ETHYLENE INSENSITIVE 2 Regulates Two Antifungal Metabolites and Resistance Against a Common Fungal Pathogen, Fusarium Graminearum” Project Summary Resistance to fungal pathogens is an important plant defensive and crucial for their...
“Do hawkmoths dream of flower shapes? Exploring innate preference by flower-naive Manduca sexta.” Project Summary: How does floral dimensions, size, and shape affect flower choice and handling in the hawkmoth Manduca sexta Gaining the fundamental...
“Functional Characterization of the Tomato Sugar Transporter SWEET10” Project Summary: Carbohydrates produced from photosynthesis are crucial to development, growth, and signaling in plants. To maintain optimal plant function, sugars must be moved from the...
“Examining characteristics of artichoke mutant phenotype in Physcomitrella patens” Project Summary: In the flowering plant Arabidopsis, mutations in members of the ERECTA gene family confer a smaller size and straighter stature in comparison to the...
“Plastoglobular Atypical ABC1 Kinase Function” Project Summary: Plastoglobules are lipoprotein particles that are present in all plastid types. They contain specialized proteomes and metabolomes, and play a variety of important roles in plastid...
“Understanding DSB repair in the context of the synaptonemal complex” Project Summary: Meiotic recombination is initiated by the formation of double-strand breaks (DSBs) in chromosomal DNA, whose repair results in crossovers (COs) and non-crossovers...
“Development of tools for structural analysis of plant membrane proteins” Project Summary: All cells and organelles are surrounded by a lipid bilayer membrane, which are impermeable to hydrophilic molecules such as sugars and small ions. Membrane...
“Transcriptome-Wide Association Study of Maize Leaf Cuticular Evaporation Rate” Project Summary: Maize yields have increased greatly, but a limiting factor is drought sensitivity. The plant cuticle is a hydrophobic layer that plays a major role in...
“Determining the threat that florally transmitted parasites pose to wild bees” Project Summary: Insect populations, including many wild bee species are in decline which is threatening the valuable pollination services they provide. Pollinators are...
“Using Natural Variation in Tomato to Identify Novel Immune Responses to Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato” Project Summary: Bacterial speck is a disease caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato that causes necrotic specks on tomato leaves, stems, flowers,...
“Marker & Pedigree Hybrid Visualization Tool” Project Summary: Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is a staple crop and key source of carbohydrates in many tropical regions of the world. Inbreeding depression has occurred in most cassava populations, resulting...
“Bacterial Communities in the Hyphosphere of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi” Project Summary: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) form a symbiotic relationship with plants, providing nutrients from soil, such as phosphorus, while receiving carbon in return....
“SpinachBase: A new database for spinach research and development” Project Summary: SpinachBase (www.spinachbasez.feilab.net) is a new web-based database for the Spinacia oleracea genome providing centralized public access to genomic and...
“Nitrogen fixing symbioses in bryophytes show host preferences between cyanobionts” Project Summary: Nitrogen is important for all plants but it is often a limiting nutrient because plants cannot directly metabolize the nitrogen gas that composes...
“Understanding the role of SlDML2 expression on ripening initiation in tomato fruit” Project Summary: More than one third of fresh fruit produced in the US each year is lost due to spoilage. As the ripening process predisposes fruit to spoilage, the...
“Developing Methods for Manipulating Meiotic Recombination in Zea mays” Project Summary: Meiosis is a cell division process in which cells reduce their chromosome number by ½ (2n->n). During this process, double stranded breaks (DSB) in chromosomal DNA...
“The Initiation and Development of Trichomes on Developing Tomato Fruits” Project Summary: Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a major food crop and each plant has tiny hairs called trichomes present on the stem, leaves, flower bud, and fruit. Not much is...
“Analysis of Cold Stress Responses in Solanum lycopersicoides Introgression Lines” Project Summary: While the world population is rapidly growing, arable acreage is shrinking causing strain on agriculture. Severe shifts in weather patterns associated with...
“Determining the cause of host specificity of Xanthomonas vasicola pv. musacearum and Xanthamonas vasicola pv. vasculorum” Project Summary: Bananas are a staple food important for subsistence and financial security in the East African Great Lakes...
“Approaches for the genetic improvement of Physalis” About me: My name is Kyle Keating and I come from a town called Centereach in the middle of Long Island, New York. Earlier in life I always knew I wanted to work with plants. I started my botanical...
“Determining the Localization of the OZ Protein Family” Project Summary: The goal of the experiment is to determine the subcellular localization of the proteins encoded by the genes OZ2, OZ3 and OZ4. RNA editing in vascular plants converts cytidine...
“Studying the Diversity and Biosynthesis of Resin Glycosides in Morning Glories” Project Summary It is estimated that over a million different metabolites exist across the plant kingdom. Members of the Convolvulaceae (morning glory) family produce...
“Analysis of the Asclepias syriaca Genome and Gene Families” Project Summary: Asclepias syriaca, known as the common milkweed, is found throughout northeastern and southeastern parts of the United States. Cardenolides are a subclass of cardiac...
“Pan-genomic analysis of Solanum habrochaites, a wild tomato plant” Project Summary: Solanum habrochaites is a diploid, wild tomato species that grows on the slopes of the Andes Mountains. Its unique phenotype includes glandular trichomes on the...
“A strategic analysis of the institutional public outreach event Art@BTI” Project Summary: The Boyce Thompson Institute is a leader in the field of basic science research of plants and other organisms. The Institute’s drafted Strategic Plan for...
Project Summary Plants are constantly exposed to pathogen attack, yet they manage to thrive and fight off these threats. Our food supply is dependent on crops’ ability to fend off these pathogens, making their biochemical defense systems a point of research...
“Functional Domain Analysis of the PSRP7 PETs Protein in Arabidopsis thaliana” Project Summary Plastid-Specific Ribosomal Proteins (PSRP) are nucleus-encoded proteins which play a role in chloroplast translation, so named because the genes exist only in...
Nicole is a student at the Loyola Marymount University. She worked in the Jander lab under the guidance of post-doc John Ramsey. For this project, Nicole look at identification of aphid defense genes by VIGS (virus induced gene silencing) in tobacco.
Carolina is currently a sophomore at Cornell University. While in the Giovannoni lab, Carolina worked with her mentor, post-doctoral associate, Nigel Gapper on development of a high-throughput assay for folic acid (B vitamin) concentrations in fruit tissues. As part...
Analysis of a SANT-domain protein controlling organ size uniformity in Arabidopsis sepal development Project Summary One of the major questions of developmental biology is how the plant cells decide when to stop growing and dividing to ensure a correctly sized organ....
Exploring Tomato Virus Diversity in China using Deep Small RNA Sequencing Project Summary Tomatoes are one of the most important vegetable crops in the world for their nutrients and their prominence in the global vegetable economy. Viruses, however, threaten the...
