Jane Glazebrook and Fumi Katagiri have received a four-year award of $1,280,000 from the NSF Arabidopsis 2010 program.   The title of the project is "Network Analysis of Disease Resistance Signaling".   The goals of the project, which begins September 20, 2004, are to use a combination of expression profiling and reverse genetics to identify Arabidopsis genes that contribute to disease resistance.   Genes that affect control of defense responses will be identified by expression profile phenotyping using a custom microarray.    The microarray data will then be used to build a model of the topology of the signal transduction network controlling defense responses to pathogen attack.

John Ward has also received a new 2010 award that is a renewal of an ongoing collaboration with Mary Lou Guerinot (Dartmouth), Jeff Harper (UN, Reno), David Salt (Purdue) and Julian Schroeder (UCSD). The project is entitled "The Ionome". The goal is to identify genes responsible for nutrient accumulation and toxic ion accumulation/exclusion. They perform ion profiling on Arabidopsis mutants grown under a variety of conditions using ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy). The project is funded for four years, starting September 1, 2004, with a total of $362,049 going to the Ward lab. /04

Peter Tiffin and collaborators Peter Reich and Ruth Shaw have received an NSF award for a project entitled, "Natural Selection and Evolutionary Constraints in an Elevated CO2 Environment". The $237,450 grant commenced July 15, 2004, continuing work begun under an IREE seed grant on the potential for plants' evolutionary responses to ongoing global climate change. /04

Fumi Katagiri recently received funding from the USDA-NRI for a project entitled "Efficient Discovery of Plant Regulatory Genes by Exploitation of Natural Variation". The project, which was funded for three years for a total award of $400,000, has long-term implications for crop improvement. Dr. Katagiri says that, "Naturally occurring genetic variation is a great genetic
resource for crop improvement. This project is to develop a new, time- and cost-efficient strategy for isolation of useful genes that are defined by such natural variation." Funding for this work commenced July 1, 2004. /04

Kate VandenBosch's lab has recently obtained support from the Department of Energy for their project "Nodulation Genes of Medicago truncatula" Governing Early Responses to Rhizobia. The grant was funded for three years for $360,000, and has a start date of September 1st. The project investigates symbiotic nitrogen fixation, a biological means of obtaining nutrients that is
exploited by plants in the legume family. This project uses Medicago as a model system to identify plant genes involved this process. One specific goal is to clone a gene, NSP1, which is required for infection by beneficial bacteria. /04

Drs. Steve Gantt, Kate VandenBosch, Carroll Vance, Ernie Retzel, Debby Samac (all from the U of Minnesota) and Maria Harrison (Boyce Thompson Institute) have received funding ($2.1 million) for a four-year study entitled "Use of Interfering RNAs to Identify Gene Function in Medicago truncatula." This award from the NSF Plant Genome will commence in October of
2004. The investigators and their team will silence the expression of about 1,500 individual genes in transgenic roots and examine the roots for altered development and symbiotic associations. /04

David Marks' work on cell fate determination will again be funded by NSF. The project, entitled "Use of a contradictory glabra3 mutant to study Arabidopsis trichome development," has been funded for three years for a total award of $405,000. Congratulations to David for obtaining this competitive renewal. /04

Anton Sanderfoot will receive an award of $21,991 for his proposal "Intracellular localization of SNARE proteins in Chlamydomonas." Nathan Springer will receive an award of $30,301 for his proposal "Identification of cis-acting elements regulation imprinted gene expression." /04

Peter Tiffin has received an REU supplement to an existing NSF grant, entitled "Evolutionary history of defense genes in the genus Zea and family Poaceae: insight from DNA sequence data." The supplement of $5,875 will fund the participation of an undergraduate student on the
project. /04

Carolyn Silflow has obtained a 4-year, $730,000 award for a project entitled Segregation and Positioning of Basal Bodies. This project is a "gene discovery" project to identify and elucidate the function of genes involved in positioning of basal bodies in Chlamydomonas. Some of the genes may have homologs in other organisms with centrioles. The project began on April 1, 2004.

George Weiblen received $16,000 from International Programs at NSF for scientific exchange between the US and the Czech Republic. This is a supplement to an NSF grant from the Ecology program titled Beta-diversity of caterpillars (Lepidoptera) in tropical rainforests: testing predictions of host specificity. The project involves the study of ecological associations between phytophagous insects and tropical trees in Papua New Guinea by US and Czech biologists. With matching funds from the Czech Academy of Science, the co-PIs and four graduate students will meet in each country to (1) improve the taxonomic identities of insect herbivores collected in Papua New Guinea, (2) establish contacts with Smithsonian Institution taxonomists, and (3)
receive laboratory training in molecular systematics in the Weiblen lab. /04

David McLaughlin received a second REU amendment to his NSF award, Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life. This addition provides over $6,000 to fund undergraduate participation on his collaborative project investigating the phylogeny of fungi. The project, with funds to Dr. McLaughlin's group this year totaling about $275,000, runs through 2006. /04.

Sue Gibson, together with David Somers in Agronomy and Plant Genetics, was awarded $31,660 for their proposal "Using Genomics Tools to Manipulate Carbon partitioning to Increase Crop Yields of Biofules and Biobased Products." The long-term goal of the research is to develop crops that allocate a larger percentage of their photosynthate to economically important compounds. The work will utilize T-DNA insertion mutants of Arabidopsis to test the role of target genes in sugar response pathways. The investigators plan to evaluate the long-term potential of this line of research to enhance seed oil yields for biodiesel and biobased feedstocks. /04

The second IREE award was received by Peter Tiffin, together with his collaborators Peter Reich (Forest Products) and Ruth Shaw (Ecology, Evolution and Behavior). This team will receive $25,000 to address the "Genetic Basis of Biomass Accumulation in theModel Plant Arabidopsis thaliana grown in ambient and elevated CO2 environments." The project will use quantitative genetics approaches to identify genetic constraints on biomass accumulation. In the long term, the work is expected to help attain high biomass-yielding crops in the face of a changing CO2 environment. /04

David Marks has also recently received notification that NSF will fund his proposal entitled "Use of a Contradictory Glabra3 mutant to study Arabidopsis Trichome Development." The $405,000 award will fund a three-year project that commences May 1, 2004. This grant enables Dr. Marks to continue his long term in the determination of cell fate in plants. /04

Recognition Awards

Assistant Professor George Weiblen has just been awarded one of this year's 11 McKnight Land-Grant Professorships.   This award was established to recognize and reward the University of Minnesota's most promising junior faculty. Another PBio faculty member, Dr. Bill Gray, is a current holder of the award. Dr. Weiblen joined the Plant Biology faculty in 2001, in a shared appointment with the Bell Museum, where he is a curator of flowering plants.   George's research under the award concerns biodiversity in tropical rainforests, with an emphasis on the evolution of plant/insect interactions.   Another awardee this year is Bryan Shuman , an assistant professor of geography, and spouse of Cynthia Weinig.   Congratulations to George, Bryan and the other awardees this year.   Information about this year's awards should soon be posted at: http://www.grad.umn.edu/faculty-staff/mcknight/land_grant_recipients.html . 1/05

The PBS Graduate Program also congratulates Professor David Biesboer, this year's recipient of the Dagley-Kirkwood award from the College of Biological Sciences. Awarded for excellence in teaching, this honor recognizes Bies' classroom teaching over the years, including General Botany and Developmental Plant Anatomy. The nomination also cited his important contributions to the first year of Nature of Life, the new orientation program for freshman in CBS. In last year's NOL, as it is called, Dave played both an organizational role, as director of the Lake Itasca Biological Station, and a teaching role. As instructor for "Bog Biology," Professor Biesboer introduced more than 70 incoming freshman to north country field botany. He has already headed back to Itasca for this year's summer session, and to prepare for the second season of NOL this July. Thanks to Bies, a new crop of students will return to campus with an interest in plants. 01/05

The achievements of two members of the Plant Biological Sciences faculty have been recognized by a prestigious University of Minnesota award. Both Mike Sadowsky (Soil, Water and Climate) and Nevin Young (Plant Pathology) are among the five recipients of this year's Distinguished McKnight University Professorships, which recognize the University's highest achieving mid-career faculty. Dr. Young is also jointly appointed in Plant Biology. Please join me in congratulating both of our valued colleagues. Note that a reception to honor the awardees will be held in the Cargill Atrium and Seminar room at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, March 26th.

Assistant Professor awarded million dollar grant
Bill Gray, assistant professor of plant biology, has been awarded a $1.04 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Gray will use the funding to improve understanding of how the plant hormone auxin regulates growth and development in plants. This has potential benefits for agriculture and horticulture and could lead to improved understanding of similar regulatory mechanisms in animals, including humans.

New faculty member receives Young Investigator Award
Cynthia Weinig, new faculty member in the Department of Plant Biology, has received a Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation's Plant Genomics Research Project (PGRP) for $1.7 million over four years. Weinig uses Arabidopsis to study evolution of plant fitness to the environment. She and collaborator Julin Maloof at UC Davis, who will share the award, are interested in understanding how selection acts on crowding responses in agricultural settings. More specifically, plants can modify their phenotype (for instance shape or form) in response to crowding and the onset of competition for sunlight. There is now strong evidence that flexible developmental responses to crowding, such as stem elongation, confer a fitness advantage to individual plants in natural settings.

University of Minnesota awarded $2.65 million by National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation has awarded $2.65 million to the University of Minnesota - along with Duke, Oregon State, and Clark universities - to study genetic relationships among fungi. The four-year grant is part of NSF's Assembling the Tree of Life program. David McLaughlin, professor of plant biology and curator of fungi, Bell Museum of Natural History, is principal investigator for the University's $510,000 share of the grant.

"In assembling the family tree of fungi, our team will look at multiple genes and structural characteristics across a broad spectrum of fungi and put them in a database," McLaughlin says. "Here at the University of Minnesota, we're studying subcellular characters. Many ultrastructural characters, such as those associated with nuclear division, have proven to be useful phylogenetic indicators. Our role will be to compile the existing data into a web accessible database as well as to gather new information, especially where there are major gaps in the data, he added."

The study could point researchers to species of fungi that, by virtue of their relatedness to medically or commercially important species, may produce new drugs or other useful products. McLaughlin says the evolutionary line leading to fungi split from lines leading to plants and animals more than 1.5 billion years ago. In 1995, researchers determined that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants, McLaughlin says. Only 5-10 percent of an estimated 1.5 million fungi species are known.

Plant Biology professor awarded David and Lucille Packard Fellowship
George Weiblen, plant biology, has been selected for a David and Lucille Packard Fellowship. This highly competitive program allows the nation's most promising young scientists and engineers to pursue research with few funding restrictions and limited paperwork. The Packard Foundation invites presidents of 50 universities to nominate two young professors for the awards. Nominations are reviewed by a panel of distinguished scientists who recommend 20 fellows to receive individual grants of $625,000 over five years. The foundation was created by David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, and his wife, Lucille Salter Packard, in 1964. Weiblen studies plant systematics, molecular phylogenetics, coevolution, and plant/pollinator interactions. He co-authored a study recently published in Nature that revised the estimated number of arthropod species worldwide from 31 million to between four and six million. Claudia Schmidt-Dannert, BMBB, received a Packard Fellowship last year.

2002 Minnesota Legislature approves $17.7 million for Plant Growth Facilities
$17.7 million for Plant Growth Facilities was included in the capital bonding bill approved by the 2002 Minnesota Legislature and Governor Ventura at the end of May. Other projects include HEAPR ($35 million), Duluth Lab Science ($33 million), Nicholson Hall ($24 million), Bede Hall, Crookston ($7.7 million), and Classroom Improvements, system wide ($2 million). The total value of the approved projects for the University, including the University's debt obligation and private contributions, is $119.4 million. Dean Elde thanks all faculty, staff, alumni, and students who contributed to the grass roots support effort by writing letters and making phone calls. Special thanks go to Ruth Shaw, professor of ecology, and Dave Biesboer, professor of plant biology, who led planning for the project and advocated for funding.