Title: “Milk of the Poppy:  More Than Meets the Eye” Host: Dr. Yanran Li Abstract: Opium poppy remains to sole commercial source of many pharmaceutical alkaloids including morphine, codeine and derivatives of thebaine, such as oxycodone and naloxone. Natural opiate biosynthesis involves two cell types – sieve elements of the phloem and adjacent laticifers. The [...]

Title: “Genome Editing in Grass Species” Host: Dr. Julia Bailey-Serres Abstract: Programmable nucleases (e.g., CRISPR RNA guided Cas nucleases) have been successfully engineered to induce site-specific mutations (deletions, insertions, and substitutions) at genomic loci in grass plants such as rice, maize, wheat, sorghum, etc. The genome editing tools have significantly advance our basic understanding of [...]