Linkan Dash: Plant Direct First Author

Linkan Dash, first author of “slim shady is a novel allele of PHYTOCHROME B present in the T-DNA line SALK_015201“

Current Position: PhD student of Dr. Dior Kelley, Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Iowa State University

Education: Masters and Bachelors in Biology (National Institute of Science Education and Research, India)

Non-scientific Interests: Music and sports

Brief bio: I grew up on the east coast of India, a natural habitat for nearly 7,000 species of flora. As a child, I was always fascinated by plants and wanted to understand what makes them fundamentally different from us humans. My early scientific career began as a master’s student in Dr. Kishore Panigrahi’s group, where I got a chance to study the intricate molecular framework underlying light signaling in Arabidopsis. Learning how light and phytohormones work in concert to regulate plant morphology fueled my intrigue towards plant biology. As a continuation of my previous work, at the beginning of the year 2019, I joined Dr. Dior Kelley’s group at Iowa State University. I share my scientific interests with her on understanding the Auxin-mediated proteotypes that regulate root development in plants. Currently, I am working on projects that aim to decipher the interplay of auxin and sugar signaling in regulating RAM maintenance in Arabidopsis and the role of PIN-like proteins that potentially regulate the asymmetric distribution of Auxin driving the typical root morphology in Zea mays. We apply various molecular approaches to answer these questions in our lab, including RNA-seq, Ribo-seq, proteomics, and phenotyping.