Doris Wagner
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Plants must decide when and where to make flowers, and how to respond when drought or heat strikes. Both choices depend on switching gene programs on and off.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Genetics
Biology
- Topics
TERMINAL FLOWER1
shoot architecture
shoot apical meristem
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Identify the enhancers and transcription factors that switch on TERMINAL FLOWER1 (TFL1), the gene that keeps the shoot tip from becoming a flower, in the shoot apex, using inducible genetic tools and high-resolution spatial and temporal measurements.
- Define the genes and pathways that TFL1 directly represses to keep shoot-apex stem cells from differentiating into a terminal flower.
- Rapidly deplete PRC2, a gene-silencing complex, or SWI/SNF, a chromatin remodeler, and measure the immediate effects on chromatin state, gene expression and plant responses to drought or heat.
- Assess how individual chromatin regulators overcome existing chromatin states, and map the contact surfaces between SWI/SNF or PRC2 and transcription factors through undergraduate CURE courses.
More about the research
In a crop, these choices set yield: how much leafy biomass or how many fruits and seeds a plant produces. Its ability to cope with stress decides how much of that yield survives a bad season. The two projects here study the regulators behind these decisions. One looks at a gene that keeps the growing shoot tip making new stem cells. The other looks at chromatin regulators, proteins that change how tightly DNA is packaged and therefore which genes can be read.
Why it matters
Learning how TFL1 is controlled could let breeders tune shoot architecture to the crop's use: more leafy growth for vegetables and biofuels, or more fruit and grain for food crops. Understanding how plants reprogram their epigenome under drought and heat could help reduce the large crop losses these stresses cause each year, supporting food security.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Venugopala Gonehal
University of California-Riverside, CA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Measure how WUSCHEL, a stem-cell-maintaining transcription factor, is made, split between nucleus and cytoplasm, spread to neighboring cells and degraded under layer-specific signals such as CLAVATA3 and cytokinin, at single-cell and tissue levels.
Hamilton Hodges
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Biochemistry
Determine how cellular signals influence which binding partners SWI/SNF chromatin remodelers (cBAF, PBAF, GBAF) select, using rapid perturbations in living cells with epigenomic and proteomic readouts.
Liming Li
Northwestern University, IL·Genetics
Identify prion-specific changes in gene expression and cell-to-cell variation in yeast carrying [SWI+], [MOT3+] or both, using high-throughput single-cell RNA sequencing.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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