Courses taught: Plant Form and Function

The research in my laboratory centers on cellulose synthesis and cotton fiber development. Cellulose is the world’s most abundant renewable material, and it exists within plant cell walls as crystalline fibrils. These are formed by a membrane-associated protein complex that acts as a nanoscale fibril spinning machine. We are interested in filling in the many gaps about how this fascinating and important natural manufacturing process is regulated by the cell. The fundamental new knowledge arising from our research is applicable to the production of next-generation value-added fiber and biomass crops through genetic engineering or marker-assisted selection.We are especially interested in cotton fiber, the world’s most important natural textile fiber, because its unique secondary wall contains almost 100% cellulose. We unify molecular biology, cell biology (including advanced imaging methods), and biochemistry to reveal new mechanisms regulating cotton fiber development. We focus on secondary wall cellulose synthesis and novel mechanisms regulating cotton fiber elongation: these processes are both critical determinants of the fiber quality characteristics that are important to the textile industry. We collaborate with Dr. Niki Robertson in the development and use of virus induced gene silencing as a faster means of testing gene function in cotton and with the Plant Transformation Lab (Drs. George Allen and Sergei Krasnyanski) to improve the efficiency of cotton stable transformation. We also use arabidopsis as a model plant for functional genomics. Our research on cotton fiber, which is funded by Cotton Incorporated, Cary, NC, and the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Program (Jeff Chen, P.I., David Stelly, Brian Scheffler, and C. Haigler, co-PIs), is an integral part of cotton fiber becoming a higher value material grown from different genetic stocks for product-specific requirements. The lab is also part of the “Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation”, an Energy Frontier Research Center led by Dr. Daniel Cosgrove at Pennsylvania State University and funded by the Department of Energy from 2009 – 2014 (www.cals.lignocellulose.org). Along with collaborators at NC State, Dr. Alex Smirnov and Dr. Yaroslava Yingling, we use advanced transmission electron microscopy in conjunction with genetic and biochemical analysis, protein structure determination and computational modeling, and nanobioengineering to probe the structure and function of the cellulose synthesizing complex. This work will interface with diverse experimental approaches of other collaborators in the Center to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the rules for assembly of lignocellulosic biomass, a main target for production of renewable biofuels and advanced materials in the future carbohydrate-based economy.