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Fall 2009 Seminars

September 9, 2009
No speaker - just a party
"Welcome for Stephan and Julie"
Description: We will have a social gathering and lunch to welcome Julie Kuhlman and Stephan Schneider. Please come and make them feel welcome over some lunch.

September 16, 2009
Drena Dobbs
" Interrogating Regulatory RNA-Protein Interactions in EIAV "
Description: We will present an update on our research on Rev, a regulatory protein essential for replication of Equine Infectious Anemia Virus (EIAV) and other lentiviruses, including HIV-1. I will highlight the work of my former PhD student, Dr. Jae-Hyung Lee, who contributed to a recently published structural model of the EIAV Rev (ERev) protein, experimentally mapped the RNA binding domain of ERev, mapped a novel high affinity binding site for Rev in the RNA genome of EIAV, and discovered an RNA structural motif that appears to be conserved within the Rev Responsive Element (RREs) of EIAV and HIV-1, and possibly all lentiviruses. Based on these results, I will speculate wildly, summarize some of our current work, and solicit suggestions regarding our future directions.

September 23, 2009
Diane Bassham
"Regulation of autophagy in Arabidopsis"

September 30, 2009
TBD

October 7, 2009
Tom Peterson
"What can we learn from transposon-induced genome rearrangements?"
Description: For several years we've been studying genome rearrangements induced by the Ac/Ds transposable element system in maize. We have a pretty good idea of how they occur (through alternative transposition events) and what they can produce (a variety of chromosome aberrations). Now we ask: what can we learn from these materials? I'll discuss a newly funded project to investigate the genetic impact of a series of segmental duplications, and I'll ask the audience for advice on achieving the goals of this project.

October 14, 2009
TBD

October 21, 2009
John Mayfield
"The Engine of Complexity"
Description: For the past 3-4 years I have been working on a book that explores the implications of viewing evolution as a computation. I will present an overview of the book and discuss the publication experience (so far!).

October 28, 2009
Jo Anne Powell-Coffman

November 4, 2009
TBD

November 11, 2009
Clark Coffman
"Future Studies of Cell Migration and Programmed Cell Death"
Description: I plan to use this brownbag to discuss ideas for future studies and to solicit comments and suggestions that can be used to improve proposals that will be submitted in response to upcoming funding opportunities. All of this work is in the preliminary data collection and planning stages. I will outline what we know and what we currently think we would like to know and then open things up to discussion of how best to achieve those aims or modify our planning to include new ideas.

November 18, 2009
Martin Spalding
"Carbon assimilation in microalgae: inorganic carbon transport and the CO2-concentrating mechanism of Chlamydomonas"
Description: Aquatic photosynthetic microorganisms, including microalgae, have adapted to the variable and often-limiting availability of CO2, and inorganic carbon (Ci) in general, by development of inducible CO2 concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) that allow them to optimize carbon acquisition. Significant advances in understanding the limiting-CO2 inducible Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CCM have occurred with the aid of mutational approaches, recognition of the existence of multiple acclimation states and the availability of the Chlamydomonas genome sequence. As a result of these advances, an integrated picture of the functional components of the microalgal CCMs is beginning to emerge, including the identification of Ci transport candidates that function either at the chloroplast envelope or at the plasma membrane, as well as other components, such as LCIB, that are critical to Ci accumulation but whose molecular functions are not clear. Our research demonstrates the key roles played by LCIB, a chloroplast protein implicated in CO2 capture and Ci accumulation, HLA3, an ABC-type transporter implicated in HCO3- transport across the plasma membrane, and LCIA, a chloroplast envelope protein implicated in HCO3- transport into the chloroplast. I will talk about recent progress and problems in trying to understand how the Chlamydomonas CCM functions during low-CO2 and very-low-CO2 acclimation.

December 2, 2009
Michael Muszynski
"TBD"

December 9, 2009
Eve Syrkin Wurtele
"Deciphering the metabolic and regulatory determinants of composition"
Description: Understanding the determinants of plant composition has been elusive. However, manipulating metabolic regulation is key to production of improved and novel constituents in crops. We describe an iterative molecular and computational approach leading to an understanding of previously unknown networks that regulate starch and fatty acid composition, by identifying genes that perturb metabolic processes. Based on the expression pattern of three genes FABP1, 2, and 3 (Mentzen et al., 2008), we postulated that they might be involved in the regulation of fatty acid metabolism. To evaluate this hypothesis, we determined that protein products of these genes are localized in the plastid, the site of de novo fatty acid biosynthesis, and that knockouts of FABP genes alter fatty acid content and composition. Using a related strategy, we identified a novel regulatory function for Arabidopsis locus At3g30720 (QQS), one of the roughly 10% of species-specific genes in the genome; little is known about the role of such proteins. Up- or down-regulation of QQS expression alters starch content, shifts the accumulation of specific transcripts, but has no noticeable effect on plant development. Analysis of co-normalized transcriptomics data using MetaOmGraph (metnetdb.org) indicates that QQS and FAB1-3 expression respond to a variety of developmental/genetic/environmental perturbations. Taken together, the data describe novel regulators of plant composition, and begin to reveal the skeleton of a previously undefined network that affects carbon flow in plants. http://metnetdb.org/. The last 15-20 minutes will be a look at the Meta!Blast videogame for cell and metabolic biology,and discussion of how it might be integrated into our curriculum. http://metablast.org/