August 2020

An Khong

An Khong

Undergraduate Research Assistant
B.S in Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, 2020

Project Description:

Maintaining the equipment and supplies to ensure the lab runs smoothly. Read more about An Khong

Halah

Halah Winner

Undergraduate Researcher
B.S in Biology at The University of Texas at Austin, 2020

Project description: 

Developing molecular tools with applications for developing new vectors for gene therapy and better

Read more about Halah Winner

Fostering Behavior Change for Coastal Management: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing

September 23, 2020

9:15am - 11:00am CST

Email sarah.cunningham@austin.utexas.edu to register

Are you interested in learning how to influence the way people interact with their environment? Then join us for Fostering Behavior Change for Coastal Management: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing! During this interactive webinar, participants will become familiar with an effective approach that has been used in

Read more about Fostering Behavior Change for Coastal Management: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing

Drs. Mary Hayhoe, Alex Huk and Larry Cormack received BRAIN Initiative grant

August 25, 2020

Mary Hayhoe, Alex Huk and Larry Cormack received a U01 BRAIN Initiative grant for their proposal entitled "Neural circuit computations for visual motion during natural primate behaviors”. The proposed work aims to understand the neural computations underlying visual motion perception and motion-based action during natural, unconstrained primate behaviors.

Read more about Drs. Mary Hayhoe, Alex Huk and Larry Cormack received BRAIN Initiative grant
C McWhite, O Papoulas, K Drew, R Cox, V June, R Dong, T Kwon, C Wan, M Salmi, SJ Roux, K Browning, P Ronald, and E Marcotte. “A pan-protein compex map reveals deep conservation and novel assemblies.” Cell, 181, Pp. 460-474. Publisher's Version Abstract
Plants are foundational for global ecological and economic systems, but most plant proteins remain uncharacterized. Protein interaction networks often suggest protein functions and open new avenues to characterize genes and proteins. We therefore systematically determined protein complexes from 13 plant species of scientific and agricultural importance, greatly expanding the known repertoire of stable protein complexes in plants. By using co-fractionation mass spectrometry, we recovered known complexes, confirmed complexes predicted to occur in plants, and identified previously unknown interactions conserved over 1.1 billion years of green plant evolution. Several novel complexes are involved in vernalization and pathogen defense, traits critical for agriculture. We also observed plant analogs of animal complexes with distinct molecular assemblies, including a megadalton-scale tRNA multi-synthetase complex. The resulting map offers a cross-species view of conserved, stable protein assemblies shared across plant cells and provides a mechanistic, biochemical framework for interpreting plant genetics and mutant phenotypes.
R Veerappa, RD Slocum, A Siegenthaler, J Wang, and SJ Roux. “Ectopic expression of a pea apyrase enhances root system architecture and drought survival in Arabidopsis and soybean.” Plant Cell and Environment, 42, Pp. 337-353. Publisher's Version Abstract
Ectoapyrases (ecto-NTPDases) function to decrease levels of extracellular ATP and ADP in animals and plants. Prior studies showed that ectopic expression of a pea ectoapyrase, psNTP9, enhanced growth in Arabidopsis seedlings and that the overexpression of the two Arabidopsis apyrases most closely related to psNTP9 enhanced auxin transport and growth in Arabidopsis. These results predicted that ectopic expression of psNTP9 could promote a more extensive root system architecture (RSA) in Arabidopsis. We confirmed that transgenic Arabidopsis seedlings had longer primary roots, more lateral roots, and more and longer root hairs than wild-type plants. Because RSA influences water uptake, we tested whether the transgenic plants could tolerate osmotic stress and water deprivation better than wild-type plants, and we confirmed these properties. Transcriptomic analyses revealed gene expression changes in the transgenic plants that helped account for their enhanced RSA and improved drought tolerance. The effects of psNTP9 were not restricted to Arabidopsis, because its expression in soybeans improved the RSA, growth, and seed yield of this crop and supported higher survival in response to drought. Our results indicate that in both Arabidopsis and soybeans, the constitutive expression of psNTP9 results in a more extensive RSA and improved survival in drought stress conditions.
G Clark and SJ Roux. “Role of Ca2+ in mediating plant responses to extracellular ATP and ADP.” International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 19. Publisher's Version Abstract
Among the most recently discovered chemical regulators of plant growth and development are extracellular nucleotides, especially extracellular ATP (eATP) and extracellular ADP (eADP). Plant cells release ATP into their extracellular matrix under a variety of different circumstances, and this eATP can then function as an agonist that binds to a specific receptor and induces signaling changes, the earliest of which is an increase in the concentration of cytosolic calcium ([Ca2+]cyt). This initial change is then amplified into downstream-signaling changes that include increased levels of reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide, which ultimately lead to major changes in the growth rate, defense responses, and leaf stomatal apertures of plants. This review presents and discusses the evidence that links receptor activation to increased [Ca2+]cyt and, ultimately, to growth and diverse adaptive changes in plant development. It also discusses the evidence that increased [Ca2+]cyt also enhances the activity of apyrase (nucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolase) enzymes that function in multiple subcellular locales to hydrolyze ATP and ADP, and thus limit or terminate the effects of these potent regulators.

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