NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2016

Conklin Phillip A, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2015. The fellowship 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 Phillip A Conklin is "Elucidating the genetic networks controlling formation of lateral organ initial cells" The host institution for the fellowship is the Cornell University and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Michael J Scanlon. Shoot meristems are pools of plant stem cells that generate lateral organs such as leaves and flowers from the meristem periphery, while maintaining a stem cell reservoir in the meristem's center. This research will tease apart the conserved and/or divergent mechanisms during the recruitment of lateral organ initials and the organization stem cells. In so doing, this study will bridge a gap in the knowledge of whether lateral organ initials and stem cells are organized by similar mechanisms operating in distinct developmental domains or, in contrast, if they are organized by distinct, domain-specific functions. The Scanlon lab at Cornell University specializes in the mechanisms of maize leaf development and employs comparative functional genomics analyses. Training objectives include maize fieldwork, high throughput DNA sequencing methods and co-expression analyses. The knowledge gained by this research aims to identify targets for the development of wider leaves and floral organs in maize, which may contribute to increased crop yield and thus food, bioenergy, and industrial feedstock production. Leaves and other lateral organs are fundamental to the conversion of solar energy into crop yield. The mechanisms whereby lateral organ initial cells are organized from the peripheral zone of shoot meristems are poorly understood in grasses. This research aims to: identify genes bound and modulated by master organizers of the meristematic functional domains in maize and compare and contrast the organization of stem cells versus lateral organ initial cells by building co-expression networks. By creating translational fusions of WUS and WOX3 to GFP, we can mark these respective stem cell and organ initial organizing centers for domain-specific ChIP-seq and RNA-seq analyses. Visualization of RNA-Seq results will be available on qTeller (www.qTeller.com). Visualization of Chip-Seq results will be uploaded to The Grassius Regulatory Grid eXplorer (http://www.grassius.org/grgx).