NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2015

Carlson Keisha D, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2015 supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Keisha Carlson is "Molecular and Physiological Response of Tomato to Changes in Light Quality". The host institutions for the fellowship are the University of Puget Sound and the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Andreas Madlung, Carmen Catalá and Lukas Mueller. Training objectives include plant functional genomics, molecular genetics and physiology. Broader impacts include providing research training internships in plant biology and bioinformatics for students from Heritage University, a private minority serving institution in Toppenish (WA). Unlike animals, plants are sessile organisms and cannot move to protect themselves from changing environments. Instead, plants sense environmental cues, which initiate cellular signaling responses resulting in developmental decisions, such as when to germinate or produce fruit. This project will help to elucidate how a gene family encoding a specific light receptor coordinates the response to light in tomato, a model for economically and socially important food crop plants. The research will be undertaken at the University of Puget Sound, a primarily undergraduate institution where research mentoring of undergraduates is a priority, thus allowing the Fellow to develop skills necessary to undertake an academic career at a similar institution while furthering research relevant to genome informed plant breeding for improved crop growth in changing environments. This project will address the perception of red light and far red light by phytochromes (PHYs) which are encoded by a small gene family. Red light cues via PHYs help plants to regulate photomorphogenesis, flowering, and shade avoidance among other processes. Gene duplication followed by selection during the evolution of the PHY gene family has led to different functions and sensitivities of individual PHY genes across plant taxa. Three PHY members in tomato have been studied genetically, but the roles of the remaining two lesser-known PHYs (SlPHYE and SlPHYF) remain to be discovered. This project aims to understand the role of each PHY gene, alone and in combination, in the vital developmental responses to light. The project will generate new mutant alleles in SlPHYE and SlPHYF using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system. The project will also use computational approaches to analyze gene expression differences among single and multiple PHY mutants in different light conditions by building transcriptional networks using RNA-seq data.