RNA-Seq analysis of lncRNAs and cis-natural antisense transcript (cis-NAT) in developing tomatoes Project Summary Since the sequencing of the human genome, it has been revealed that the vast majority of DNA does not code for proteins. However, upon transcription, some...
Adam is currently in his senior year at Washburn University in Topeka, KS. During his internship, Adam’s project focused on natural variation in wild tomato species as a model to understand plant-pathogen evolution. While in the lab, Adam used several techniques...
Adam is currently in his junior year at Tufts University. During his internship, Adam worked under his mentor Chang-Sik Oh on a project focused on protein-protein interaction strengths in a pathogen-host system using a new technique – the split-luciferase assay. While...
The influence of a polyamine oxidase inhibitor on the hydrogen peroxide defense system of Arabidopsis thaliana against Pseudomonas syringae Bacterial infection by Pseudomonas syringae can cause leaf-spot and blast diseases that defoliate plants, leading to high loss...
Aileen worked on developing a small RNA analysis pipeline, mainly to identify miRNAs. She also worked on integrating the analysis results into the Tomato Functional Genomics Database.
MtPT4: A vital protein for arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis within Medicago truncatula Although the importance of phosphorous in overall plant health is well known, the acquisition of phosphorous from arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi to plant root cortical cell in AM...
Aliza is currently a student at Smith College. This summer, Aliza worked in the Kochian lab with graduate student Melinda Klein on a project researching the effect of zinc on plant growth. For this project, she PCR-genotyped plants and grew Arabidopsis hydroponically...
Gene discovery, annotation and orthology in the Asian citrus psyllid genome Project summary The Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri, is the vector host to the citrus industry’s most threatening bacterial pathogen, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus. This bacterium...
Alyssa is a student at SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY. In the Brutnell lab, Alyssa’s summer internship focused on identifying, isolating, and cloning of Ds (Dissociation) elements using standard molecular techniques such as Polymerase Chain...
Alyssa is from Merced, California studying at Fresno State. In the Brutnell lab, she is working with Ling Bai, a graduate student, on the Pink Scutellum project. This project uses the Ac tagging system to create new alleles of the ?-cyclase gene in the carotenoid...
Carotenoids are 40- carbon lipid-soluble terpenoid molecules which are present in most tissues of higher plants. Carotenoids are strong antioxidants that protect the plant from harmful reactive oxygen species (ROS) and protect plastids from photo-oxidation from excess...
Exploration of potential interactions between SA signaling and lipid metabolism: characterization of two putative SA-binding proteins (pSABPs) Shaven 3(SHV3) and Shaven-Like 2(SVL2) in plant resistance Despite the abundance of plants and their relative ease of study,...
Samantha is returning student who is now a sophomore at Cornell University. She worked in the Brutnell lab under the guidance of Kevin Ahern looking at directed gene tagging in Maize. For this project, Samantha used techniques she learned as a high school intern as...
Diversity analysis of wild tomato species in the Lycopersicum clade using transcriptomes S. lycopersicum, the domesticated tomato’s genetic diversity has been drastically reduced due to bottlenecks during domestication and as a result, useful allele diversity has been...
Phenotypic and genetic instability of a gene duplication in Arabidopsis thaliana Project Summary A duplication of the pathogen Resistance gene SNC1 in Arabidopsis thaliana results in a semi-dominant, curly leaved, dwarfing phenotype called bal. A 55-kb duplication of...
Amy is currently a senior at the University of Texas in Austin, TX. While in the Doyle lab, Amy studied the Glycine falcata phylogenies using chloroplast DNA and nuclear DNA. During her internship, Amy learned several techniques including gene phylogenies,...
RNA-seq Assembly of Transcriptomes in Various Tissues Collected from Solanum habrochaites, S. lycopersicum, S. pennellii, S. pimpinellifollium and Introgression Line 4-3 With the advent of high throughput nucleotide sequencing, genomics and transcriptomics have become...
Transcriptome characterization and evolution in cultivated and wild tomato species Project Summary Solanum lycopersicum, more commonly known as the tomato, is one of our most important agricultural crop. Not only is the bright red and fleshy fruit of the tomato a good...
Characterizing Arabidopsis FLS2 protein interactions using a split luciferase complementation assay FLS2 is receptor-like kinase that recognizes the bacterial protein flagellin. While this protein is important to plant immunity, little is known about signaling pathway...
Salicylic acid(SA) is a plant hormone that plays an important role in plant immunity and stress response. The hormone is involved in processes such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and hypersensitive response (a type or programmed cell death that acts to...
Transcription factor ATML1 is needed for giant cell patterning on the Arabidopsis sepal. Project Summary The formation of specialized cell types and patterns during development is necessary for the proper structure and function of a tissue. During Arabidopsis sepal...
Investigating Natural Variation of Epigenetic Regulation of the Promoter of the Stress Response Gene ESM1 Epithiospecifier Modifier 1 (ESM1) is a stress response gene affecting secondary metabolite formation in response to herbivory. In the promoter region of this...
Functional Analysis of Aphid Salivary Proteins Aphids rely on salivary proteins to infest plants. We have identified ~20 candidate genes encoding salivary proteins in Myzus persicae. I have started cloning and expressing 3 aphid salivary proteins. In planta expression...
Use of virus-induced gene silencing in Arabidopsis thaliana to identify trans-acting factors involved in mitochondrial editing RNA editing is any post-transcriptional modification to the primary transcript. In the organelles of flowering plants, some C’s undergo C-U...
Anthony is currently at Rochester Institute of Technology For the duration of his internship, Anthony worked under the supervision of Dr. Zhangjun Fei on PathOmics, integrating omics datasets with pathway information.
Anthony is currently a student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Working with mentor Yunbi Xu and in collaboration with the Comstock lab, Anthony helped identify simple sequence repeats (SSRs) to fill in the gaps of the rice genome. For this project, he learned...
April is a student at the University of California- Berkeley. In the Giovannoni lab, April worked with post-doc Julia Vrebalov on a project that investigated family of NAC genes in tomato. For this project, April learned about DNA isolation, sequencing,...
Exploring the Role of CYP72A Genes in Maize Stress Response Project Summary Cytochrome P450 (CYP) genes are conserved in nearly all genomes and comprise approximately 1% of plant genomes. CYP proteins perform a wide range of biochemical functions, and are organized...
An Investigation of Cytokinin Regulation in the Arabidopsis thaliana Root Meristem This summer under the supervision of my P I, Dr. Ji-young Lee, and my mentors, Jose Sebastian and Jing Zhou, I participated in an investigation of cytokinin signaling in the Arabidopsis...
Designing Functional Ripening-Control Tomato Promoters Tomato, Solanum lycopersicum has been the subject of many studies focused on the development and ripening process of climacteric fruits; studies focus on pigmentation, texture, aroma, flavor, and nutrient...
Investigating the Function of β-Amylase5 in Maize Leaf Development and Differentiation When photosynthesis ceases during the night, sugars become available to plant systems by the breakdown of starch stored in chloroplasts. In vitro, β-amylases (BAMs) degrade starch...
Functional dissection of the ADR1 CCR domain and identification of its protein interactions in the plant immune system R-NB-LRR proteins are able to activate resistance signaling, characterized by hypersensitive response (HR). With little known of this domain, testing...
Comparison of effectiveness in gene silencing of phytoene desaturase (PDS) gene through RNAi and CRISPR techniques Project Summary Targeted genome editing approach- CRISPR/Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated) is relatively...
Benjamin is a student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. In the Giovannoni lab, Ben worked with post-doc Rob Alba on a project that investigated the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway and the role of phytochrome in ripening in tomato. For this...
Development of Interspecific NILs for Yield Enhancement in Rice Though the complete genome sequence of rice became available in 2005, the development of improved varieties containing optimal combinations of the 30,000 genes in the rice genome remains a logistical...
Forward and reverse genetics for determining the genes involved in Rubisco assembly in Sertaria vidiris and Arabidopsis thaliana Project Summary The vast majority of plants are C3 plants; they perform photorespiration and create sugars through carbon fixation. ...
Sharmila’s hometown is Palm Beach, FL and she is an undergrad here at Cornell. Sharmila splits her time between the Comstock lab, working with Paul King and the Brutnell lab, working with Judy Kolkman. Her project focuses on the physiological aspects of a maize wilted...
Characterization of Suberin Biosynthesis and Deposition in Arabidopsis thaliana Roots The polymer suberin plays a crucial role in plants, forming barriers that restrict and direct the flow of water, solutes and gases in the root endodermis. Since suberization of the...
A cross species exploration of nuclear morphology Our knowledge and understanding of the structures and mechanisms responsible for nuclear organization are based primarily on research in animal cells. In order to address the lack of understanding of plant nuclear...
Molecular and cytological characterization of dsyCS Meiotic recombination is the basis of evolutionary change over time. While recombination has been extensively studied, still little is known of the mechanisms behind this process. Many studies have suggested that...
Use of SUP-TALs to suppress virulence factors in Xanthomonas BLS256 Project Summary The bacterial plant pathogen Xanthomonas causes devastating disease on various plant species such as rice and soybeans, which results in bacterial infections such as bacterial leaf...
Bonnie is a student at St. Norbert College and worked this summer in the Rose lab with mentor Sang Jik Lee. Her project was a genome-scale screen to identify secreted proteins from tomato infected with the oomycete Phytophthora infestans. For this project, she used a...
Identification of genes expressed during key stages in maize shoot apical meristem and embryogenesis development During the summer I worked on the homology of the grass cotyledon, specifically in maize. My project focused on identifying genes expressed during key...
Characterization of singlet oxygen responsive transcription factors mutants During my stay at BTI, I analyzed two of transcription factors, WRKY46 and WRKY53. The biological relevance of these transcription factors was addressed by analyzing the double and triple...
Britney is currently a student at the Florida Insitute of Technology. For the duration of her internship, Britney worked under the supervision of Dr. Jian Hua to study lesion cell death in Arabidopsis. While completing her research, Britney learned several ”wet lab”...
Bryan is currently a student at local Ithaca High School. In the Jander lab, Bryan worked with post-doc Jae Hak Kim on a project studying glucosinolate induction by Myzus persicae, or the green peach aphid, using artificial diets. Glucosinolates and their breakdown...
Understanding the roles of the benzoxazinoid genes Bx10a, Bx10b, and Bx10c in maize-aphid resistance Project Summary Natural defense mechanisms are crucial for protecting plants against biological threats. Benzoxazinoids are secondary metabolites in maize that are...
