Submitted by Chandler Sutherland on
Plants have powerful defense mechanisms, which rely on an arsenal of plant immune receptors. Major classes of plant immune receptors include Receptor like kinases (RLKs), receptor like proteins (RLPs), and Nucleotide Binding Leucine Rich Repeat (NLR) proteins. On the population level, plant immune receptors provide plants with enough diversity to keep up with rapidly evolving pathogens and activate plant immune defenses. How such diversity is generated on the genomic level is not fully understood. This project will use biochemical and bioinformatic approaches to understand how diversity is generated in rapidly evolving immune receptors.
The student will be involved with investigating plant deaminases as a novel class of DNA mutators. This project will include training in several standard molecular biology techniques, including PCR, cloning, protein expression, western blots, purification, and DNA extraction. Bioinformatic tasks will include processing long read sequencing data for mutation discovery.
As a member of our research community, the student is expected to:
- Generally maintain a positive, solution-oriented attitude.
- Cultivate your scientific curiosity.
- Report anything wrong in the lab or accidents to your mentor or other members of the lab group immediately.
- Maintain a legible, organized, and fully-updated electronic lab notebook shared with the PI and your lab mentor.
- Discuss commitments outside of the lab with your mentor if they fall within your work hours or may affect your ability to commit to the agreed research hours.
- Present your research at a lab meeting, typically at the end of the semester (in lieu of a final if you are taking research credits).
- Read and understand literature related to your project.
- Be familiar with and meet the deadlines and benchmarks of your Studies Programme.
- Provide the presentation/reports materials for comments to your supervisors in the group ahead of time.
- Perform your research with a publication quality standard, providing figures and tables or other required materials, co-authoring papers with other lab members.
- Have fun and enjoy research.
We are looking for students from all backgrounds who show demonstrated interest in applying their skills to open questions in biology and evolution. However, completion of Bio 1A is required. Previous experience with molecular biology and biochemistry techniques (DNA extraction, cloning, PCR, protein expression) and/or bioinformatic analysis (proficiency in python, bash or R; experience with sequencing data) is desirable but not essential. Understanding of the principles of genomics and next generation sequencing is beneficial.