Collaborations

Dave Skibbe of Stanford (second from left) smiles for the camera, reflecting the excellent help he received from Sarah (far left), Eric, Cedric, and Kristen in dissecting tens of thousands of staged anthers from Mutator tassels. Multiple replicate samples of each stage from four pairs of sister active and inactive Mutator lines are being used in proteomics and transcriptome profiling to pinpoint gene expression changes during anther development and to discover proteins whose abundance or post-translational status is affected by Mutator activity.

Our 2005 Stanford field hat commemorates the drive to Cal Poly -- 3 hours on Highway 101 -- well worth every minute to work with our collaborators at SLO.

2005 Field Season: We've started a very successful collaboration with Professors Matt Ritter and Jeff Wong of Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo to further our research and provide research experiences for undergraduates in their labs. They received a grant from the State of California to coordinate research partnerships with plant genetics programs at other institutions, to facilitate planting and evaluating project materials at SLO. The purpose of the collaborations are to further good science while providing new research opportunities for undergraduates at Cal Poly-SLO. The first step in the Stanford-SLO collaboration was planting 50,000 corn seed in May 2005. Wow -- 12 undergraduates came the first day and we planted 20,000 seed by hand and 5,000 by machine! Throughout the season Cal Poly student Kelsey working with Jeff Wong kept our plants in top shape, removing weeds, fertilizing, and then conducting most of the pollinations of stocks. At Stanford we hoe every field by hand -- we're impressed with what a tractor can do! Additionally the partnership with SLO allowed us to triple our maize plant population compared to what is possible at Stanford.

Screen for a Mu-tagged mac1 allele: Stanford undergraduate David Duncan conducted a screen of ~30,000 adult plants to identify Mu transposon mutants of mac1, a gene that regulates whether cells undergo meiosis, with the help of Cal Poly undergraduates. This project is part of a new direction in the lab to understand anther ontogeny, in collaboration with Zac Cande and Lisa Harper of UC-Berkeley. Within the anther, MuDR programs excision in the strictly somatic epidermal and endothecial layers of the anther, while net replicative transposition occurs in precursors to the meiocytes. We want to define host factors that underlie cellular differentiation to better understand the switch in transposition outcome.

Mu-based Enhancer trap and Activation gene tagging: Dr. Gillian Nan with the help of Yale undergraduate and summer student Kyla Harris of Stanford screened 2500 plant samples from SLO to identify individuals with newly transposed copies of our new MightyMu tagging vectors that had segregated away from the original transgene array. We found lots of winners! These are the founders (through outcross pollination) of families that we will destructively screen at SLO in summer 2006 for GUS staining in the anthers (Enhancer trap lines) and developmental defects (Activation tag lines) in the tassel. In summer 2005 Cal Poly summer students (Kelsey, Bo, Cedric, Eric) screened leaf punches from all of the plants to identify individuals positive for GUS expression, indicating a Mu Enhancer trap insertion into a maize promoter region.

Proteomics of anther development in Mutator active and silenced lines: Stanford postdoc Dave Skibbe organized dissection parties for his anther development project. Four SLO undergrads helped for many hours over ~10 days to ensure collection of 96 sample types with a sufficient number of carefully staged anthers in each sample for proteomics analysis.

2006: We're already looking forward to the next field season!