Danforth Plant Science Center

#IAmScience Lauren Jenkins

March 12, 2021 By Becca Wolf in #IAmScience Tags: Danforth Plant Science Center, drought, maize, MU Interdisciplinary Plant Group

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC

As someone interested in getting a Ph.D., you apply to several schools and programs hoping to get in.

When Lauren Jenkins first interviewed with Mizzou, she knew it was the one. But the interview was not the first time she’s had a good impression with the school.

As an undergraduate student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Jenkins’ first science conference was the Interdisciplinary Plant Group (IPG) Seminar at the Bond Life Sciences Center.

“I actually had the opportunity to give a talk there,” Jenkins said. “I just remember being an undergrad and I was so intimidated, but it actually turned out really well. I had some cool conversations there and no one made me feel unimportant, people were really interested in it.”

Now a Ph.D. student in the Ruthie Angelovici lab, Jenkins got started in January and has hit the ground running.

“I’m very impressed with her ability to interpret the biology and how quickly she’s getting the hang of things and contributing creative ideas,” Angelovici said. “It can be a bit overwhelming, so I really appreciate how well she’s integrated in and I think she’s bringing a lot of analytical perspective that is very needed in the lab.”

Jenkins works on several projects in the lab.

Her main two focuses look at changes in the protein metabolism in maize under drought conditions to see how the proteins balance themselves after a large change.

In addition, she engages in research approaches that will lead to identification of high priority candidate genes in maize and Arabidopsis, that can potentially change protein quality in seeds.

“Plants are awesome for that because every plant has its own metabolism going on,” Jenkins said. “There are endless possibilities to what you can research in that regard.”

Plant metabolism is important because it comprises pathways that are essential to plant growth, regulation and has a large impact on the development and survival of the plant.

“It is really cool,” Jenkins said. “I’ve never been involved in big genetics projects and to see how those can be fruitful is really cool. I’ll also get to do some really cool molecular work on them that I also haven’t done before, and it will be fun to take those forward.”

Jenkins’ previous experience comes from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, where she was an intern.

“My work at the internship really gave me a lot of skills,” Jenkins said. “I worked with some mass spectrometry while I was there, which is some of the skill sets that we use in the lab here. One big thing for me is that I already know how to do this and it’s good because they both look into metabolism.”

This experience helped her jump right in to the Angelovici lab.

“She brings a fresh perspective,” Angelovici said. “She has a lot of background in analytics and now she’s learning to integrate her analytic skills with the system biology that we are doing. It’s very early days for her, but she’s showing a lot of promise.”

Two months in and Jenkins is happy with her choice to come to Bond LSC.

“The plant science community is super great,” Jenkins said. “It’s kind of close knit and I really enjoy the interactions that I get. Even big-name PIs are really personable and love talking about their science with you, which is really nice.”

Regulators Classify Gene-Edited Rice Varieties with Disease Resistance as Equivalent to Conventional Varieties

October 14, 2020 By Roger Meissen in Research Tags: CRISPR, Danforth Plant Science Center, rice

Crops resist bacterial leaf blight; ruling clears path to provide smallholder farmers with a safe, affordable option for preventing destructive disease

Columbia and St. Louis, MO, October 14, 2020 – The Healthy Crops team, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have used gene editing tools to develop new varieties of disease-resistant rice that regulators in the United States and Colombia have determined are equivalent to what could be accomplished with conventional breeding. Bacterial blight can reduce rice yields by up to 70 percent, with the heaviest losses typically experienced by smallholder rice growers in low and middle-income countries. This has a profound impact on farmer productivity and economic mobility. The Healthy Crops team turned to gene editing to develop disease-resistant varieties as a way to provide farmers with a safe, affordable, effective solution.

“We first set about to understand the gene the bacteria use to make the plant vulnerable to its disease,” said Bing Yang, PhD, a researcher with the University of Missouri Bond Life Sciences Center professor, Division of Plant Sciences and member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. “We then used our CRISPR technology precisely to remove the element in the gene to avoid the pathway the pathogen takes that makes the plants susceptible to blight.”

The team used gene editing to create rice lines in elite varieties that are comparable to naturally occurring variants. These lines can resist infection by bacterial leaf blight, which leads to major losses for one of the world’s most important food crops. The rulings from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the corresponding authority in Colombia, the Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario (ICA), clear the way for field tests to select the best material for distribution to breeders in the U.S. and Colombia.

The improvements were accomplished via gene editing, which did not introduce any DNA into the plants and focused on “promoter regions” in three genes that are targeted by the causative agent of rice blight, the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pathovar oryzae. The research was described in an article in Nature Biotechnology in 2019.

Yang is just one member of the research consortium, headed by Humboldt Professor Wolf B. Frommer from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), that has worked more than four years on this research. Six research institutions on three continents were involved including the University of Missouri, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, University of Florida, the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) in France and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.

In the wake of the ruling from U.S. and Colombian officials, the new blight-resistant varieties can now be used to introduce the resistance trait into many different types of rice via standard breeding strategies. Additional testing and breeding work is expected to take place in multiple locations that are favorable for growing tropical rice varieties.

“It’s exciting to use science and technology to do to help farmers protect and improve their rice production,” Yang said. “We hope to work closely with the local institutions in the next phase to introduce these into the varieties of rice small farmers use.”

The Healthy Crops Team has no commercial interest in its work. Its goal is to ensure disease- resistant rice varieties are accessible and affordable, especially for smallholder farmers who depend on rice production to support their families.

About The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
Founded in 1998, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is a not-for-profit research institute with a mission to improve the human condition through plant science. Research, education and outreach aim to have impact at the nexus of food security and the environment, and position the St. Louis region as a world center for plant science. The Center’s work is funded through competitive grants from many sources, including the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Follow us on Twitter at @DanforthCenter.

About Bond Life Sciences Center

Founded in 2004, the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center was designed with teamwork in mind, fostering collaborations between scientists of diverse disciplines and backgrounds. From cancer and HIV to plant science and informatics, our researchers work together to move basic science forward and lay the groundwork for a better world. Learn more at bondlsc.missouri.edu.

Life Sciences Week preview: Doing more with less

April 9, 2015 By Caleb O'Brien in Events and speakers Tags: Bond Life Sciences Center, Brain Candy, Danforth Plant Science Center, Life Sciences Week, UMSL, vegetable oil

A simple virtue lies at the heart of Xuemin (Sam) Wang’s research: thrift.

“A good way to think of it is how to increase output without demanding more inputs,” Wang said.

Wang, the E. Desmond Lee and Family Fund endowed professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, studies plant membrane lipids. His lab is focused on understanding the relationship between oil production and plant stresses such as drought and nutrient deficiency.

Wang will speak during the 31st annual Missouri Life Sciences Week, a yearly celebration of MU’s research and an exploration of public policy, entrepreneurship and science outreach.

Wang’s lab uses Arabidopsis, the lab mouse of the plant world, as a discovery tool but also works with crops such as soybean and the Camelina species. Camelina was widely grown in Europe before it was supplanted by canola, but Wang and others are working to develop Camelina as a productive oil crop.

The lab studies how lipids — the fatty acids that make up cell membranes — help regulate cell function. For example, they’re trying to figure out how a cell senses water and nutrients and then “determines whether it should grow faster or store more lipid or carbohydrates,” Wang said.

By understanding those processes, future research might develop plants that do more with less. That could mean less water and chemical fertilizer needed for the same or greater yield. Wang pointed to reliance on fertilizers as a major problem.

“Not only does it drive up agriculture production costs, but there can be major environmental consequences.”

Ultimately, Wang’s research could improve plant oil and biomass production while decreasing our dependence on fertilizers and abundant water.

Wang’s presentation on “Lipids as Molecular Switches in plant stress signaling and metabolic integration” constitutes this year’s Charles W. Gehrke distinguished lecture. Gehrke, a MU professor of Biochemistry who died in 2009, was instrumental in advancing the field of chromatography and helped analyze rock samples retrieved from the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Gehrke grew up in poverty during the great depression and worked in melon fields during his youth before studying at Ohio State University.

Missouri Life Sciences Week is an annual event. In addition to Wang’s talk, this year’s line-up will also focus on HIV and emerging diseases and highlight more than 300 undergraduate and graduate research projects at its poster sessions.

Check out the full schedule of events here.