Faculty
June 30, 2021
Christopher Hardin
June 30, 2021
Craig Schenck
To deal with relentless environmental pressures, plants produce an arsenal of structurally diverse defensive chemicals. These sometimes-complex compounds are derived from much simpler building blocks from primary metabolic pathways. Unlike well-documented diversification of plant specialized metabolic enzymes, core metabolic pathways are highly conserved and evolutionarily constrained because they serve essential metabolic functions, which makes manipulation of these pathways difficult. The expansion and alteration of core metabolism has given rise to the evolution of structurally diverse plant specialized metabolites. However, the underlying mechanisms enabling metabolic diversity and the connections linking core to specialized metabolism are not well known. These knowledge gaps…
June 29, 2021
Pam Bruzina
Educational background Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison…
April 5, 2021
Heike Buecking
Plants are metaorganisms that engage in intimate associations with a wide diversity of microorganisms. Many of these microorganisms are beneficial and help plants to overcome a variety of abiotic and biotic stresses. In our research, we focus particularly on arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and nitrogen fixing rhizobia bacteria. AM fungi played a significant role during land plant evolution and form close interactions with the roots of 70% of land plants, including many agronomically important species, such as corn, soybean, or wheat. AM fungi increase the nutrient acquisition of for example phosphate, nitrogen, sulfur, and potassium from the soil, and improve…
Feb. 9, 2021
Katherine Hagely
Jan. 21, 2021
Keri L. Jacobs
Dr. Keri L. Jacobs is associate professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Missouri and holds the Partridge Chair in Cooperative Leadership. In 2021, she was named Executive Director of the Graduate Institute of Cooperative Leadership (GICL). In her outreach role, Jacobs partners with cooperatives and their associations to create and deliver director and talent development programs in cooperative governance and finance, and to engage with cooperative boards and leadership in strategic planning. Through collaboration with industry and key stakeholders, she pursues research that seeks to inform and elevate producers’ opportunities through collective action within their supply…
Jan. 8, 2021
Bhanu Telugu
Dec. 11, 2020
So-Yon Park
Host-Parasitic plant interaction is a fascinating model to study Plant-Plant interaction. Park is interested in how mobile RNAs and proteins are exchanged, transferred, and functional in other organisms through the host-parasite interaction. Cuscuta (stem parasitic plant) and Phelipanche (root parasitic plant) growing on Arabidopsis, tomato, and soybean are major parasites used in Park lab. We are also interested in how small RNAs are transported and suppress target genes under drought stress in soybeans. Educational Background B.S., Dankook University, South KoreaPh.D., Seoul National University, South Korea…
Sep. 17, 2020
Barry Edwards
Aug. 25, 2020