John Fowler
Oregon State University, OR·Plant Science & Agriculture
Seeds and grain depend on pollen. Each pollen grain must deliver sperm cells to the female embryo sac inside the flower.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Genetics
Computer Science
- Topics
maize
corn
Zea mays
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Measure gene-specific contributions to pollen fitness for several hundred maize genes, using fluorescently marked Ds-GFP insertion mutants and the EarVision automated imaging and computer vision phenotyping system.
- Build machine learning and statistical models that relate genome, transcriptome and proteome data to the loss-of-function pollen phenotypes of specific maize genes.
- Use the best-performing model to predict pollen phenotype from genotype, then validate those predictions with indirect and direct tests.
- Develop statistical methods for high-content ear images to test how altered pollen function influences patterns in the progeny population on the maize ear.
More about the research
In maize (corn), stresses such as high heat can destroy pollen viability and disrupt the crop. Yet for most maize genes, no one knows how much each one contributes to pollen function. This project asks whether those contributions can be measured at large scale and then predicted from genome-wide data.
Why it matters
Crops such as maize depend on healthy pollen to set grain, and heat stress can destroy pollen viability. Knowing which genes support pollen function could inform efforts to breed more resilient crops or to control germ line activity in plants, which could benefit farmers facing rising temperatures.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Melissa Lehti-Shiu
Michigan State University, MI·Plant Science & Agriculture
Measure genetic interactions between 150–200 pairs of Arabidopsis protein kinase genes by phenotyping single and double mutants under 3–5 temperature regimes, using AI-based trait measurement.
Marisa Otegui
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Plant Science & Agriculture
Analyze how autophagy, the cell's self-digestion recycling system, affects recycling in different photosynthetic maize leaf cell types, using pooled cell-type proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.
Linda Hanley-Bowdoin
North Carolina State University, NC·Plant Science & Agriculture
Define and visualize DNA replication initiation regions and measure genome-wide transcription rates in B73 maize root tip meristems, using in vivo labeling of newly copied DNA and flow sorting of nuclei.
The school
Oregon State University: 29 labs on PI Pages, $372M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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