Lab News
December 2024
Along with former postdoc and new faculty member Satyaki, we posted a pre-print on a simple new method to generate structural variation (insertions, deletions, inversions, translocations) in plant genomes. We hope that this method allows researchers to access a type of genetic variation with potential for novel phenotypic impact compared to EMS mutagenesis. Congrats to first author Lindsey Bechen on getting this over the finish line!
Elizabeth defended her thesis on the regulation and function of the DNA demethylase ROS1 on December 11th. Congratulations! We are very proud of you.
October 2024
Elizabeth posted a pre-print on the function of the DNA demethylase ROS1 in endosperm. It has been known for many years that DME acts before fertilization to remove methylation from the what will be the maternally-inherited endosperm genome. Elizabeth found that in contrast ROS1 is required to maintain the paternally-inherited genome in a hypomethylated state at regions with low maternal and paternal allele methylation in wild-type endosperm.
July 2024
Mary is named an HHMI Investigator!!
June 2024
Welcome back to Luke Young-Xu from Williams College, who will again be spending a summer in the lab. We are also joined this summer by MSRP student Kyla Hughes from Tennessee State University.
Souraya published a nice review in Current Opinion in Plant Biology on the epigenetic machinery that mediates parental conflict in endosperm.
May 2024
Whitehead posted a nice piece on “a day in the life of a graduate student” featuring our own Carly Martin. Check out the video and text here.
We bid a fond farewell to our undergrads, Alysse and Kylee. Alysse is graduating from Course 20 and will pursue a post-bac at Stanford (congrats!). Kylee and Alysse have been immensely helpful in moving Carly’s project forward!
April 2024
Congratulations to Junsik! His paper on the reproductive role of CRWNs was accepted for publication in New Phytologist. You can read all about it here.
Congratulations to Ann, who passed her qualifying exam with flying colors!
March 2024
Former postdoc Becky Povilus posted a preprint describing her research on the evolution of gene imprinting in flowering plants, taking advantage of the unique seed characters of water lilies.
January 2024
Welcome back to Luke Young-Xu, who is returning for the month to continue his summer project on methylation dynamics.
Welcome to Mead Lockwood, a first-year graduate student in Biological Engineering who is rotating this month. He is working with Roman to test CRISPRi approaches.
December 2023
Welcome to new postdoc Sonia Boor. Sonia completed her PhD in Dennis Kim’s lab at MGH, working on on how internal states are generated and maintained in C. elegans. She is interested in climate and sustainability and will work on our orphan crop project, among others.
October 2023
Welcome to Lidia Hoffman, a visiting Master’s student from Heidelberg. Lidia will spend 3 months in the lab working with Souraya on developing lines marking endosperm nuclei types.
Junsik posted a new preprint on the impact of CRWN nuclear lamina proteins on the H3K27me3 landscape and gene expression in the endosperm. You can check it out here.
September 2023
Mary is named the inaugural David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research.
Welcome to new postdoc Joo Young Lim! She joins us from Seoul National University, where she performed her PhD research in the lab of Jin Hoe Huh. Also welcome to postdoc Matteo Gionfriddo! He will be working with the Shoulders Lab and my lab on the EPIC project.
June 2023
Welcome to several new lab members! Joining the lab today are Ann Yang, a first year MIT Biology PhD student who will perform her thesis research in the lab; Rocio Nunez-Vazquez, a PhD student in Crisanto Gutierrez’s lab in Madrid, who will spend the summer in the lab developing some new techniques to understand stress biology; and Luke Young-Xu, an undergraduate at Williams College, participating in the Williams to Whitehead program.
May 2023
Congratulations to Elizabeth Hemenway, whose review article on the capacity for epigenetic memory in plants has been published in Annual Review of Plant Biology. It’s open access — check it out!
We bid a very fond farewell to postdoc Becky Povilus. It was a delight to have Becky in the lab and she taught as all so much about plants! Becky has taken a position as a Geneticist at the USDA-ARS in Lake Geneva, NY. Congratulations, Becky! Watch this space for news of the culmination of Becky’s postdoc research.
January 2023
Congratulations to Roman, who’s been named an EMBO Fellow! He’s working on aspects of autonomous endosperm development in Arabidopsis.
Also this month we welcome Alysse Pusey to the lab, who will be working with Carly.
September 2022
Roman Podolec joins the lab for postdoctoral research. Previously, Roman was a graduate student with Roman Ulm at the University of Geneva, investigating perception and signaling of ultraviolet B radiation.
May 2022
A big welcome to Carly Martin, an MIT Biology PhD student joining the lab. Carly is interested in genomes, peptides, and parental conflict.