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 [...]

Title: “Protein Condensation to Regulate ARF Transcription Factor Activity” Hosts: Julia Bailey-Serres & Zhenbiao Yang

Title: “From networks to switches: systems approaches to unravel the control of biological processes necessary for plant life” Host: Julia Bailey-Serres Abstract: Nitrogen is essential for plant growth. Insufficient nitrogen leads to decreased agricultural yield while nitrogen application from fertilizers results in increased plant productivity but can have a negative impact on the environment. Changes [...]

Title: “Circadian Timing Mechanisms in Seasonal Flowering and Plant-Pollinator Interaction” Host: Dawn Nagel Abstract: Many organisms display various seasonal developmental and behavioral changes throughout the year. In my lab, we are interested in elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which organisms use their circadian clock systems to measure and respond to daily and seasonal changes. In [...]

Title: “From molecules to genomes: Integrating scales to traverse the genotype-phenotype divide” Host: Patricia Springer