Happenings

CONGRATULATIONS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER. Illinois Plant Biologist and Gutgsell Professor Stephen Long has been elected a FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, the United Kingdom's most elite scientific body. Shown here describing his biofuels research to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu at a recent Advanced Research Projects Agenecy-Energy (ARPA-E) summit in Washington, D.C., Stephen was cited by the Royal Society thus: "His integration of mechanistic models with novel techniques in environmental physiology and innovative large-scale field experiments have changed understanding of how global change affects productivity and physiology scaling from molecular to regional levels, and has informed approaches to improving crop yield. His work contributed to the emergence of Miscanthus as a major bioenergy crop and provided a novel framework for increasing crop yields through improved photosynthetic efficiency." Read more at the Institute for Genomic Biology's site here. Congratulations Stephen!

FODDER FOR FUEL. If plants are to make a significant contribution to modern society's seemingly unquenchable thirst for liquid fuels, we'll need to choose, understand and breed the best species for the job. A multi-institutional team that includes Illinois Plant Biologist Andrew Leakey has been awarded a five-year, $12.1 million grant from the US Department of Energy to explore genetically, physiologically and agronomically Foxtail Millet (Setaria viridis). The project, lead by the St. Louis Danforth Center, seeks to elevate the relatively obscure S. viridis to the level of "model organism", with insights from the study of which to be rapidly applied to its cousins, promising biofuel feedstock candidates, Miscanthus and switchgrass. Andy's research program will receive $1.8M of the award to focus on drought tolerance. Read the story or watch the video to hear Andy describe the project. Andy's DOE Biofuels project was recently featured on a segment of EarthSky. Click here to listen to the episode.

CONGRATULATIONS to Plant Biology grad student Ryan Kelly and PEEC grad student Carolyn Barrett, winner and runner-up, respectively, of the 2012 Deevey Award from the Paleoecology Section of the Ecological Society of America. The award is given annually "to honor [Edward S.] Deevey's contributions through fostering the highest quality paleoecological research by graduate students. The award recognizes the best oral or poster presentation in paleoecology by a graduate student at the annual meeting of the Society." Ryan's award-winning talk was entitled "Pushing the limits of the Alaskan boreal forest fire regime: Modern changes in a 10,000 year context" and Carolyn's, "How many lake-sediment cores do we need to characterize regional fire-regime changes using macro-charcoal records?". Both Ryan and Carolyn work with Feng Sheng Hu.

ON THE ORIGINS OF SEX (chromosomes). We may take for granted the X and Y chromosomes that largely determine our, and many plants', genders. But they weren't born out of thin air. They evolved by chance and selection from garden variety non-sex chromosomes called autosomes. Our human X and Y are about 167 million years old. Illinois Plant Biologist Ray Ming's team discovered that papaya's Yh chromosome was born a mere 7 million years ago when a major sequence rearrangement in the DNA of a papaya autosome occurred by chance, genetically isolating it from recombination with its erstwhile partner autosome. The Yh was further estranged 5 million years later with a second major inversion and continues to evolve to this day, slowly losing genes. At the same time, the papaya X chromosome is growing, bloating up with repetitive gene-less DNA. These and other findings were reported by Ray and co-workers in a pair of papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

CONGRATULATIONS to Plant Biology Graduate Student Paul Nabity on his Ph.D. and successful defense of his thesis entitled "Interplay between insect herbivores and induced-plant responses"" under Evan DeLucia.

CONGRATULATIONS to Plant Biology Graduate Student Ashley Spence on her Ph.D. and successful defense of her thesis entitled "Molecular analysis of cold tolerance in Miscanthus x giganteus"" under Stephen Long.

Biotechnology Professional Science Master's students chart a new course for the Plant Biology graduate degree programs: The Professional Science Master's (PSM) in Plant Biology is situated at the exciting intersection of the science and business of biotechnology, this non-thesis, 16-month program of study merges interdisciplinary graduate studies with the business knowledge and skills vital to the management needs of biotechnology industries. The PSM in Plant Biology enhances the preparation of students for these careers by embedding experiential learning and industry connections into a biotechnology-focused course of study. The first Plant Biology PSM students are advancing their interests in R&D, public relations, market research and consulting. Learn More…

CONGRATULATIONS to Plant Biology Graduate Student Andrea Gschwend on her Ph.D. and successful defense of her thesis entitled "Genetically mapping the male-specific region of male and hermaphrodite papaya's Y chromosome; effects of elevated carbon dioxide on soybean flower abortion" under Ray Ming.

Browse our Scrapbook for past Happenings.