News from the Plant Biology Graduate Program at UMass Amherst

December 21, 2011 | Vol. 1, No. 2 | h!p://www.bio.umass.edu/plantbio/

New PB faculty member Dong Wang joined the Dept. of BMB as an Assistant Professor in September 2011. His research focuses on mechanisms of intracellular symbiosis between eukaryotic legume hosts and nitrogen-fixing bacteria http://www.biochem.umass.edu/wang/index_wang.html

Five students join PB Gregory DeIulio from SUNY Albany, Zhongyun Huang from Fudan University, PRC and Scott Lee from UMass Amherst joined the Ph.D. program this fall, joined by MS students Stephanie Craig (Ana Caicedo’s lab) and Michael Urbanowski (Tobias Baskin’s lab). Thanks to the 2010/2011 PB Admissions Committee and to everyone who participated in the recruiting events.

PB Steering Tobias Baskin Magdalena Bezanilla Michelle DaCosta Jennifer Normanly Om Parkash and Peter van Gisbergen (student representative)

PB GOC Tobias Baskin Ana Caicedo Magdalena Bezanilla Om Parkash Elsbeth Walker (GPD)

PB Newsletter Jennifer Normanly Michelle DaCosta Nicole Soper Gorden (student representative)

PB Admissions Sam Hazen (Chair) Ana Caicedo Michelle DaCosta Geunhwa Jung Danny Schnell

Congratulations to Peter Hepler

Stephanie Michael

Gregory Zhongyun Scott

who has been awarded DOE funding for several biofuels projects, including a DOE Early Career Award for “Optimizing plant-microbial systems for energy” one of 65 awarded from approximately 1,150 applications across the country. UMass Amherst and MIT each had three laboratories receiving DOE early career grants this year. Sam also received an award from the Genomic Science and Technology for Energy and the Environment Program for “Systems level regulation of rhythmic growth rate and biomass accumulation in grasses,” and a USDA-DOE award from the Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy Program for “Modulation of photoreceptor signaling networks for improved biomass accumulation using a bioenergy crop model.”

Congratulations to Alice Cheung who was named an American Society of Plant Biologists Fellow in 2010, awarded to 0.2% of the society membership annually; ~5000 members worldwide. Alice has also been appointed to a three-year term on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Academia Sinica Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology

PB Director and GPD Elsbeth Walker

who received the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award from the American Society of Plant Biologists 

Congratulations to Sam Hazen 

Hitoshi

The PB Newsletter Committee wants to hear from you! For upcoming newsletters, please keep us updated (normanly@biochem.umass.edu) about new publications, grants and awards, and alums tell us what you are up to.

Erin Mostoller  (MS 2008 with Robin Harrington) is currently working for the USDA-ARS in Davis, CA in Sustainable Viticulture in Napa Countyhttp://www.ars.usda.gov/research/projects/projects.htm?ACCN_NO=417954

Julie Ritchie (MS 2009 with Magdalena Bezanilla) is is a Scientist II in the biotherapeutics department at Boehringer Ingelheim in Ridgefield CT (since August 2010, before that Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for 2 years) generating host cell lines in a variety of mammalian cell lines (CHOK1, HEK293, and NS0), as well as testing new host cell lines for future development.

Annette Kolb (MS, 1999 with Peter Alpert), currently holds a Postdoc position (similar to "Assistant Professor” including teaching) as a plant ecologist at the University of Bremen in Germany. http://www.vegetation.uni-bremen.de/vegetation/mitarbeiter/kolb

Kathleen W. Farquharson (Ph.D., 2005 with Peter Hepler) lives in Seattle and works as a science editor/writer for The Plant Cell, BioEdit and ScienceDocs, and is co-founder of planteditors.com, an English-language editing service for plant biologists.

Shuang Wu (PhD 2010 with Tobias Baskin) is currently a postdoctoral fellow with Kimberly Gallagher at U. Penn. Wu S, Scheible W-R, Schindelasch D, Van Den Daele H, De Veylder L, Baskin TI (2010) A conditional mutation in arabidopsis separase induces chromosome non-disjunction, aberrant morphogenesis, and cyclin B1;1 stability. Development  137: 953 - 961.   (A faculty of 1000 "must read" paper). 

Nicole Soper Gorden (Adler lab) gave an oral presentation at the annual Ecological Society of America meeting in Austin, TX this past summer.

Kathy and family

Shu-Zon Wu, Julie A. Ritchie (Bezanilla lab) are first and second author, respectively along with Ai-Hong Pan, Ralph S. Quatrano and Magdalena Bezanilla, Myosin VIII Regulates Protonemal Patterning and Developmental Timing in the Moss Physcomitrella patens Mol. Plant (2011) 4:909-921

Anhiruda Dixit and Om Parkash, A Novel Stress-Associated Protein ‘AtSAP10’ from Arabidopsis thaliana Confers Tolerance to Nickel, Manganese, Zinc, and High Temperature Stress. PLoS ONE 2011, 6(6): e20921. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020921

Danny Schnell to lead ARPA-E project with co-PIs Jennifer Normanly, Om Parkash, Michelle DaCosta along with collaborators from UMass, Washington State University, UC Berkeley and Metabolix have been awarded a  PETRO grant (Plants Engineered to Replace Oil) to develop an improved oilseed crop that uses carbon more efficiently than traditional crops, allowing a substantial increase in production of fuel per acre of planted land.

Shu-Zon

Danny Jennifer Om Michelle

News from PB Alums

Robert C. Augustine, Kelli A. Pattavina, Erkan Tüzel, Luis Vidali, and Magdalena Bezanilla, Actin Interacting Protein1 and Actin Depolymerizing Factor Drive Rapid Actin Dynamics in Physcomitrella patens Plant Cell 2011 tpc.111.090753 Anhiruda

Robert

Jeonghwa Lee (PhD, 2009 with Danny Schnell), currently holds a postdoc position at the National Academy of Agricultural Science in Korea, where she is working on crop genomics.