[Plsgs] Please Join Us- 4/16/24- Seminar - Dr. Madelaine Bartlett- “Looking back to look forward: understanding morphological diversity for agricultural improvement”

Mon Apr 15 11:11:43 MST 2024

Dear all,

Please join us! We have the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Madelaine Bartlet<https://www.umass.edu/biology/about/directories/faculty/madelaine-e-bartlett> who is presenting virtually from UMass Amherst for her seminar presentation as part of our SPLS seminar series:

Title:

“Looking back to look forward: understanding morphological diversity for agricultural improvement”

Tuesday, April 16th, 2024

4-5PM

Marley 230

Refreshments served in Marley lobby at 3:30pm.

Zoom:

https://arizona.zoom.us/j/83044711714

(password: spls23)

*Speaker will be presenting via Zoom

Abstract:

Plants have evolved diverse morphological solutions to diverse ecological problems: cacti survive in deserts, tiny duckweeds float on water, and carnivorous plants get their nitrogen from prey lured into elaborate traps. Despite immense morphological diversity, plants are constructed from homologous organs, using deeply conserved genes. Understanding how the processes of evolution remixed, refashioned, and recast conserved components to generate diversity will provide transformative blueprints and strategies for innovation in synthetic biology, crop engineering, and biomimetics. To get there, we must first understand how complex morphological traits arise and change over deep time. We must also understand how evolutionary change to deeply conserved regulators affects development. My lab works to identify the genes that regulate the development of complex traits, define how these genes function together in development, and determine how evolutionary change in these genes affects the evolution of organismal form. We focus specifically on the grasses. The grass family has diversified to occupy almost every terrestrial niche, and dominates ecosystems. Multiple experimental systems in the family allow us to dissect the molecular underpinnings of this diversity, and to reconstruct molecular and morphological evolution of key genes and traits. We integrate genetics, genomics, molecular evolution, and machine learning-enabled quantitative phenotyping to provide an integrative and multi-scale view of evolution. The grass traits I will be discussing in my seminar are the evolution and development of organ elaborations called awns, and the evolution and development of floral sexuality. Both awns and floral sexuality directly impact plant fitness and crop yield. Thus, our work not only reveals the fundamentals of organismal evolution, but has important implications for agriculture.

Bio:
Dr. Bartlett received her BSc in Molecular Biology from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) in 2004, her PhD in Plant Biology from the University of California Berkeley in 2010, and performed postdoctoral research in maize genetics at Brigham Young University before starting in a tenure track faculty position at UMass Amherst in 2014, where she is now a full professor. Among other honors, Dr. Bartlett received a prestigious CAREER grant from the NSF, was a 2019/2020 Lilly teaching fellow, was named the 2018 ‘Emerging Leader’ by the Botanical Society of America, and won the 2022 Maize Genetics Cooperation Marcus Rhoades Early Career award.

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Thank you and I look forward to seeing you there,

Keenia

Keenia Shinagawa, M. Ed. she/her

Student Support | Graduate Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

School of Plant Sciences (SPLS)
College of Ag., Life & Environ. Sci (CALES)
Office: Forbes, 317
PO Box 210036 | Tucson, AZ 85721

O: (520) 621-1336
kshinagawa at arizona.edu<mailto:kshinagawa at arizona.edu>
www.arizona.edu<https://www.arizona.edu/>

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Student Resources:

CALS Life Management Counselors<https://cals.arizona.edu/life-management-services> | CALS Learning Lab<https://cals.arizona.edu/learning-lab> | Grad Path User Guides<https://grad.arizona.edu/gsas/gradpath/gradpath-user-guides>

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