Synthetic biology is a set of tools, a way of thinking, the integration of engineering principles into biological sciences, and potentially the biggest opportunity for advances in plant sciences since PCR. Yet many struggle to define it, and fewer still grasp its full potential. What is synthetic…

A modular cloning toolkit for genome editing in plants Genome editing with the CRISPR/Cas system is now widely used in functional studies across biological sciences including plant biology. Typically, this system involves a DNA nuclease and a guide RNA that directs the nuclease to a specific location…

All aboard the mentor-ship: making and using an Individual Development Plan Recorded September 10, 2019  About This Webinar Individual Development Plans (IDPs) are a tool to facilitate student-trainer relationships and help students and post-docs of all levels to evaluate their project and career…

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Scott Barolo about how he made a popular board game into a teaching tool, and we start a two-part discussion about the grad school application process. Scott gained his BSc at Penn State University and his Ph.D. in biology at the University of California, San Diego.…

About you Describe your journey from student to newly appointed faculty     I did my undergraduate at Barnard College, it’s the Women's College at Columbia University in New York City. New York City is not the first place you would expect to fall in love with Plant Science, but I ended…

Review: Developmental thermal responses in Arabidopsis Plants can modify their growth in response to environmental challenges. In a recent review, Vu et al. summarize the molecular mechanisms underlying high temperature responses during the Arabidopsis life cycle. At early stages, high temperature…

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Zen Faulkes about the graduate application process, what program directors are looking for and how hard (or indeed impossible) it is to have unbiased selection system.  Zen gained a B.A., Psychology at the University of Lethbridge in 1989 and a Ph.D. at the University…

Describe your journey from student to newly appointed faculty    I grew up on the Iowa/Illinois border in the heart of the corn belt.  Despite being surround by the golden waves of grain, I did not start working on plants until later in my career. My undergraduate degree was in Biomedical Engineering…