PROTOPLASTS, GENE EDITING, AND REGENERATION
Sustainability for the Future
ABOUT MY RESEARCH
Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions
Plants today have an urgency now more than ever to be environmentally sustainable and resilient to the changing climate. Both of these problems have served a global food security crisis and biodiversity loss. The limits on our ability to generate these necessary plants can be broken down into two bottlenecks: plant transformation needs and genome editing needs.
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Plant Transformation Needs:
• Genetically enhance somatic embryo development and plant regeneration
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Genome Editing Needs:
• Improve homologous recombination efficiency
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Currently, there is no plant regeneration method that works across all plant species. This limits the improvement of crops to ones that have a stable regeneration method. If we could find a regeneration method that could cross the species to species barrier, the bottleneck would be greatly reduced, if not all together broken.
The long-term goal of this project is to find a reproducible regeneration method that doesn’t rely on arduous tissue culture methods. We strongly believe that utilizing protoplasts is the answer.
ABOUT ME
PhD Student in Horticulture
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I fell in love with science in Colorado. My appreciation of nature and my interaction with the outdoors sparked a curiosity in the natural world. This curiosity developed during a high school biotechnology class. It was here that I first encountered genetics interacting with modern technology. Not only was this scientific field fascinating, but it also had real world applications. In translational plant science, my scientific inquiry can help fight world hunger and increase environmental sustainability.
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I attended Southern Illinois University (SIU) - Carbondale for my bachelor's degree in Plant Biology. I was in research labs all 4 years along with obtaining 3 minors in Business and Administration, Chemistry, and Marketing. During my undergraduate career, I was also given the opportunity to intern at the Danforth Center and Benson Hill Biosystems in St Louis. I am currently a PhD student at Virginia Tech. My first year was spent doing rotations where I was able to meet new people and experience different lab environments. I chose to join Dr. Bastiaan Bargmann's lab for my PhD research for the opportunity to be a part of a new lab and the exciting genetic and tissue culture work being proposed.
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Beyond academia, I have always had a passion for community engagement. During my time in my sorority, Sigma Kappa, I was elected Vice President of Philanthropic Service. During my term I raised over $20,000 for the Alzheimer's Association and the Sigma Kappa Foundation. Of the $20,000, nearly 70% was raised at a gala I organized and executed. Additionally, my sorority would frequently visit local nursing homes and collect food for the SIU Food Pantry. I was appointed appointed Vice President of New Member Education my senior year. Teaching new members the history and values of Sigma Kappa gave me a passion for teaching. Currently, I am the Recruitment Chair for Translational Plant Science at Virginia Tech. I'm looking forward to our recruitment weekend and welcoming the new students during orientation week.
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In the future, I plan to go into industry and work for a company that has a focus on crop genetic modification. I also want to stay involved in leadership and community service.
CONTACT ME
School of Plant and Environmental Science, Virginia Tech
514 Latham Hall, 220 Ag-Quad Ln, Blacksburg, VA 24061
