Kudos to the following students who received Junior Fellowships this year: Sean Bickerton in Sankaran Thayumanavan's lab in the Chemistry Department; Danielle Cotter in Cynthia Baldwin's lab in the Veterinary and Animal Sciences Department; Lindsay Dawson in Jeanne Hardy's lab in the Chemistry Department; Shannon Egna in Lisa Scott's lab in the Psychology Department; Kari Fischer in Alice Cheung's lab in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department; Peter Garas in Jeff Blaustein's lab in the Psychology Department; Joshua Grolman in Gregory Tew's lab in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department; David Paquette in Lila Gierasch's lab in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department; Kelli Pattavina in Magdalena Bezanilla's lab in the Biology Department; Alexandra Protopopova in Melinda Novak's lab in the Psychology Department; Michael Quercio in Kathleen Arcaro's lab in the Veterinary and Animal Sciences Department; Christine Rega in Jeff Podos' lab in the Biology Department; Jennifer Rivero in Priscilla Clarkson's lab in the Kinesiology Department; Nematullah Sharaf in Alejandro Heuck's lab in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department; Dima Tokar in James Holden's lab in the Microbiology Department.
Current News
Elsbeth Walker has been awarded a one-year grant for $125,017 from the USDA to study iron uptake in plants.
Adequate iron uptake by crop plants is necessary for optimizing crop yields and for ensuring that edible crops contain adequate amounts of iron for the diets of both humans and livestock. Iron nutritional status of crop plants is determined both by the efficiency with which they can take up iron from the soil, and the efficiency with which they use iron within their organs and tissues. The Gramineae (grasses), which are among the world's most important crop plants (*e.g.*, rice, maize, and wheat), take up iron by a mechanism that is fundamentally different from that of other plant species. Evidence is accumulating that grasses also accomplish internal iron translocation using mechanisms that are distinct from those used by non-grasses.
The purpose of this study is to identify and characterize the unique molecular mechanisms that grasses use for internal iron movement. Given the importance of grass crops, which include the world's major grain crops, maize, wheat, rice and barley, elucidation of the unique processes that grasses use in overcoming iron deficiency stress is essential. We are testing the hypothesis that the Yellow Stripe-Like (YSL) genes in maize can mediate the transport of iron-PS complexes internally. We choose to examine this family because the founding member of the YSL family, maize YS1, transports Fe(III)-PS complexes and is responsible for the primary assimilation of iron in maize. The possibility that YSLs expressed in the internal tissues of grasses can mediate Fe(III)-PS transport has not been carefully examined.
Tobias Baskin was invited to participate and speak in the Plant Growth and Biology and Modeling workshop, sponsored by Agron-Omics and the Center for Plant Integrative Biology, held this fall in Elche, Spain. The workshop had sessions on leaf development, root development, and large-scale phenotyping.
Elsbeth Walker (Biology), Sue Roberts (Chemical Engineering), and Jennifer Normanly (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) have received a two-year NIH ARRA grant of $1,045,201 to establish a Taxol™ consortium that applies molecular biology approaches to characterizing and manipulating *Taxus* metabolism for production of the important anti-cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol™). The long term goal is to understand the gene networks that plant cells use to produce chemicals that are useful as pharmaceuticals. With this knowledge, they will be able to make drugs that are cheaper, and more environmentally friendly, and more abundantly available. The current project will result in the characterization of genes that play a role in controlling paclitaxel synthesis. We have developed new technology to sort plant cells according to the amount of paclitaxel that they accumulate and the investigators will examine the differences in gene expression in these sorted cell populations. The ability to profile gene expression in a subpopulation of cells is a new approach that will identify genes for which expression is masked in a heterogeneous population of cells. To complete this project, the group will establish new resources for gene discovery in *Taxus*. Currently, only a handful of *Taxus* sequences are publicly available. They will sequence 20,000 'ESTs'-genes that are being expressed in cultures that produce paclitaxel -- to provide an extensive new resource for the plant biotechnology community.
Elsbeth Walker recently received a $400,000 two-year grant from NSF as part of the ARRA program.
The ultimate goal of this grant is a thorough understanding of the mechanisms by which plants acquire and then maintain the correct levels of iron and other transition metals in cells and tissues. Plants use a variety of complex mechanisms to acquire sparingly soluble iron from the soil, translocate iron within and between organs, and signal iron status of above ground parts back to the roots where primary iron acquisition is accomplished. In spite of rapid progress in understanding several of these processes in recent years, little is known about molecules involved in the processes that plants use to move metals on a large scale: from organ to organ, or across several tissues within an organ. This work on the Yellow Strip-Like (YSL) family of proteins is focused on exactly these large scale, whole plant processes: YSL transporters are required for normal iron, zinc, and copper movement in both vegetative and reproductive tissues.
She has hypothesized that YSLs function to pull metals from the xylem stream into the intercoastal portions of the leaf. Furthermore, regulated YSL expression acts as a cutoff valve that shuts down metal uptake into mature photosynthetic tissue to spare limiting metals for the shoot apical meristem and reproductive tissues during periods of metal insufficiency. The project proposed here will test this model. In order to improve our understanding of the roles that YSL proteins play, the lab will develop more reliable and straightforward assays that will allow them to define the transport activities of the YSL transporters. By knowing the relative affinities of each YSL for particular metal ligands, they can understand the specific biochemical roles of each YSL *in planta.* In the course of this project, they will also define the roles of additional YSL family members in metal ion movement during germination and during seed development.
Peg Riley's laboratory has been awarded 3 NIH supplemental funding requests from the President's ARRA program, totaling nearly $300,000 in direct costs. The purpose of the student supplement is to support 3 undergraduates in summer research on the existing proposal entitled "Evolution of Stress-induced Bacterial Toxins". The students will learn plasmid transformation. If loci associated with stress response of bacteriocins are located on the plasmids, the students will attempt to move these genes into a naive background to assess the percent each gene contributes to the stress-based phenotypes.
The Administrative supplement's goal was to help stimulate the scientific economy. With it, we are able to provide immediate employment for several qualified women in science, increase our spending on micro array technology (which is produced by a small domestic-based company), and enable us to more readily continue our research into antibiotic resistance.
Peg Riley, as the Director of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences, has just produced a report, based on a summit held at UMass Amherst last spring, entitled: The next steps in STEM education reform in Massachusetts. In her role as the Director of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences Peg also hosted the Academy's first annual members meeting.
Peg Riley has been invited by the Office of Science to serve on the Department of Energy's Working Group charged with "Creating the Long-term Strategic Vision for the Biological and Environmental Sciences at the DOE." She will specifically be focused on defining the characteristics of sustainability science over the next two decades.
The HHMI Undergraduate Science Program congratulates the following students for being selected to participate in the 2009-2010 Academic Year Research Internship Program. This year's recipients will receive a $1200 stipend and $500 for lab supplies to conduct independent research in the lab of their choice. This year's recipients represent a variety of majors conducting research in a wide range of labs on campus.
Sarah Fadden (Dr. Sandy Petersen's Lab, Veterinary and Animal Sciences Department); Rebecca Lamothe (Dr. Samuel Hazen's Lab, Biology Department); Kevin Pelland (Dr. Adam Porter's Lab, Department of Plant, Soil and Insect Sciences); Muriel Herd (Dr. Dan Chase's Lab, Biochemistry Department); Jason Lee (Dr. Neil Forbes' Lab, Department of Chemical Engineering; Lynn Liu (Dr. Jennifer Ross' Lab, Department of Physics); Dominick Matos (Dr. John Nambu's Lab, Biology Department); Parth Patel (Dr. Dan Chase's Lab, Biochemistry Department); Avital Percher (Dr. Gregory Tew's Lab, Department of Polymer Science); David Ramsden (Dr. R. Thomas Zoeller's Lab, Biology Department); Jamie Richmond (Dr. Jerrold Meyer's Lab, Department of Psychology); Sruthi Satishchandran (Dr. Gerald Downes' Lab, Biology Department); Michael Theriault (Dr. Elizabeth Stuart's Lab, Microbiology Department); Hannah Tosi (Dr. Duncan Irschick's Lab, Biology Department); Michael Urbanowski (Dr. Tobias Baskin's Lab, Biology Department); Sameen Wijensundara (Dr. Derek Lovley's Lab, Microbiology Department).
In early October Tom Zoeller was a presenter at an international symposium on "Hormones: Environmental Factors and Nosology of the Endocrine System", sponsored by the Hellenic Endocrine Society. The title of his talk was "Environmental Chemicals Targeting Thyroid."
