Plant Biology Graduate Program UMass Amherst

03/27/2020

Dear PB,

Please join in on the 'Daily Zoom Coffee/Tea Time' as a 'Virtual Day-Starter' that begins today, Friday, March 27th, 2020 from 9:30 am to 10:00 am.

Our next one will be on Monday.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/659134217

Meeting ID: 659 134 217

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05/02/2019

Please join us for today’s PB seminar! Dr. Elizabeth Vierling will host Drs. Bill Miller and Lynn Adler, as well as UMass Extension Staff, for this seminar: 'Collaborating with UMass Extension to advance agricultural research and public education'. The seminar will be part presentation and part discussion/Q & A. The goal is to identify opportunities for creating mutually beneficial collaborations and linkages between CAFE/Extension and faculty and students in the Plant Biology program.

The seminar will start at 4:00pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all!

04/25/2019

Good morning everyone. Please join us for today’s PB seminar by Dr. Lila Gierasch from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMass Amherst. Dr. Gierasch will give us a talk entitled ‘The challenges and joys of scientific publishing: seen from a journal editor’s viewpoint’.

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all!

04/18/2019

Please join us for today’s PB seminar by Dr. Adrian Hegeman from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Hegeman will present a talk titled ‘Methodology for assessing metabolic phenotypes’. His group is working to make mass spectrometry approaches accessible for linking macroscopic phenomena to their molecular underpinnings to generate new insights into plant biology and plant-derived products. You can found more information about his research here: http://hegemanlab.cfans.umn.edu
The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all!

04/11/2019

Good morning everyone. We are excited to welcome Dr. Barbara Valent from Kansas State University as this week ’s PB seminar speaker. Dr. Valent will present a talk titled ‘From mobile genes to mobile proteins: effectors in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae’. Dr. Valent focuses on understanding effector biology and biotrophic strategies used by the ascomycete fungus Magnaporthe (Pyricularia) oryzae to cause the devastating rice blast disease. Her lab is currently applying live cell microscopy and functional genomics to understand how the fungus colonizes living rice cells. The goals of her lab are to leverage knowledge gained from blast research to protect U.S. rice production from blast disease and to prepare for and prevent establishment of wheat blast disease in the U.S. More information about her research can be found here: https://www.plantpath.k-state.edu/people/faculty/valent/

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all this afternoon!

Research in the Valent Lab focuses on understanding effector biology and biotrophic strategies used by the ascomycete fungus Magnaporthe (Pyricularia) oryzae to cause the devastating rice blast disease. Her laboratory is currently applying live cell microscopy and functional genomics to understand h...

04/04/2019

Please join us for today’s PB seminar by Dr. Carolyn Lee-Parsons from Northeastern University! Dr. Lee-Parsons will present a talk titled ‘Engineering the production of medicinal natural products from plant cell cultures’. Her research focuses on biochemical engineering, specifically the area of metabolic engineering. Her group is applying metabolic engineering principles and methodologies to improve the production of important compounds, i.e. critical plant-derived pharmaceuticals or biofuels, from plant cell & tissue cultures and microalgae cultures. You can found more information about his research here: https://web.northeastern.edu/lee-parsons/

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all!

Northeastern University

03/28/2019

Good morning everyone. We are excited to welcome Dr. Shuang Wu back and present his work for today’s seminar. Dr. Wu obtained his Ph.D. in our PB program 👏 and now works at Fujian Agricultural and Forestry University. He will present a talk entitled ‘Beyond cell wall: lignification and suberization in plant roots’. His research focuses on the understanding of how cell division and cell fate determination of the plant root systems are spatiotemporally controlled. More information about his research can be found here: http://fafu-ucr-hbmc.ucr.edu/shuang.html

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all this afternoon!

03/19/2019

Seminar today!!!
We will have a joint MCB/PB seminar today at ISB 221. Dr. Jing Ke Weng will present a talk titled ‘Metabolic Evolution in Plants’. Dr. Weng had an illustrious early career studying the evolution and diversity of specialized metabolism to probe fundamental biological questions in plants. He applies the knowledge of biosynthetic origins of natural products to understand their role in human health and disease as well as discovery and engineering of metabolites for biotechnological application. More information about his research can be found here: http://wenglab.wi.mit.edu

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in ISB, Room 221. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all this afternoon!

03/07/2019

Good morning everyone. We are excited to welcome Dr. Zhongchi Liu from the University of Maryland as this week ’s jonint PB/SSA seminar speaker. Dr. Liu will present a talk titled ‘Genomic and genetic analyses linking genes to reproductive traits in the wild strawberry’. Her lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms of controlling flower and fruit development and applying this knowledge into agriculture. More information about her research can be found here: http://www.clfs.umd.edu/CBMG/faculty/Liu/lab/Research.html.

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all this afternoon!

02/14/2019

Good morning everyone! We are excited to welcome Dr. Yong-Hwan Lee from Soeul National University to present the joint PB/SSA seminar: Systems biology initiative for the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. Lee’s group works on the molecular mechanisms of rice blast, a compelling model system for studying host-parasite interactions. Meanwhile, his group has developed a bioinformatics portal system to archive enormous volumes of data on genetic diversities that exist among pathogen populations and genomes, which will be devoted to understand and predict the spatial and temporal variation of fungal pathogenesis. More information about his research can be found here: http://biography.omicsonline.org/korea/seoul-national-university/lee-yonghwan-475413.

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all this afternoon!

02/07/2019

Please join us for today’s PB seminar by Dr. David Jackson from the Cold Spring Harbor Labs. Dr. Jackson will present a talk titled ‘New receptor pathways in maize stem cell regulation and impact on crop yields’. His lab studies genes and signals that regulate plant growth and architecture through effects on stem cell maintenance and identity and their work has implications on crop yield. You can found more information about his research here: http://jacksonlab.labsites.cshl.edu/

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all!

We are interested in how the shape or morphology of plants is determined. This is a fundamental question in developmental biology, with downstream applications in plant productivity and crop yields. Specifically, we aim to define the molecular and genetic pathways that control development. Recently,...

01/31/2019

We’re excited to welcome Dr. Eric von Wettberg from the University of Vermont for today PB seminar. Dr. Wettberg will present a talk entitled "The Queen of Sheba's chickpeas: the divergence of crops and their associated microbes after domestication”. The research interests in the Wettberg Lab are broad, encompassing agroecology, conservation, ecology, and evolution. They are a group of evolutionary ecologists who focus on how the population bottlenecks, that have occurred during either crop domestication and breeding, affect genetic diversity and stress tolerance in crops, crop wild relatives and in endangered species. More information about his research can be found here: http://ericvonwettberg.wixsite.com/laboratory.

The seminar will start at 4:00 pm, in Morrill Science Center 2 South, Room 222. Refreshments will be served at 3:50 pm. We are looking forward to seeing you all this afternoon!