Projects

Analyzing data from the Plasticity Project, I am working to understand how suberized barriers form and provide resilience to rice plants in response to multiple stresses.

Gene regulatory networks shape developmental plasticity of root cell types under water extremes in rice

I connected the evolutionary history of developmental regulatory transcription factors to asexual sporulating structure morphology in Pezizomycotina fungi. 

Recurrent loss of abaA, a master regulator of asexual development in filamentous fungi, correlates with changes in genomic and morphological traits

Mentor: Dr. Matt Mead

I used the bioinformatics program antiSMASH to predict putative specialized biosynthetic gene clusters in a range of plant genomes. I found that very few of the predicted clusters showed patterns of co-expression, while co-expression validated known clusters. While genomic clustering exists, itis not as powerful as co-expression in identifying novel plant metabolic pathways: A Global Coexpression Network Approach for Connecting Genes to Specialized Metabolic Pathways in Plants. 

Mentor: Dr. Jen Wisecaver