Research Perspectives
The long-term goal of the research in my lab was to improve plant function and sustainability, particularly in the face of a changing environment.
We approached this goal from both whole-plant and molecular biology perspectives.
Plant-parasitic nematodes cause significant crop losses worldwide. Colleagues in the Jaenike lab (University of Rochester) have discovered that a fly species parasitized by a nematode similar to those that destroy plants is protected from the nematodes by a symbiotic bacterium from the genus Spiroplasma (Jaenike et al. 2010). We performed experiments to determine whether crop plants can tolerate infection with the particular Spiroplasma species that has been shown to confer nematode resistance in flies.
Molecular-level research into post-transcriptional control of chloroplast gene expression
Chloroplast translation is essential for plant survival. Despite this, the factors involved in land plant chloroplast translation are neither well-defined nor well-understood. Results from our experiments led to a better understanding of the fundamentals of chloroplast translation in land plants.
Land plant chloroplast translation is primarily controlled by the interaction of nuclear-encoded proteins with 5' untranslated regions (5' UTRs) of chloroplast mRNAs. We discovered that some chloroplast 5' UTR-binding proteins recognize a diverse assortment of chloroplast mRNAs (Robida et al 2002). We also defined phylogenetically conserved elements in chloroplast 5' UTRs that are absolutely required for efficient translation in vivo (Baecker et al 2009). I hypothesize that interactions between these 5' UTR elements and their binding proteins may be responsible for global regulation of chloroplast translation.