This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2014. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Matthew Zinkgraf is "Transcriptional Regulation and Gene Networks Underlying Vascular Cambium Development in Populus". The host institutions for the fellowship are the US Forest Service and the University of California, Davis and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Andrew Groover and Vladimir Filkov.
The research will lead to a more fundamental understanding of secondary, woody growth in trees. Secondary growth is an important part of the carbon cycle, specifically carbon sequestration, and an integral aspect of forest ecology. The training objectives of this project include learning opportunities in advanced molecular genetic techniques and computational biology for the Fellow and the development of an independent career. Broader impacts include mentoring undergraduate students, professional development, and public outreach to communities in California and Wisconsin.
The proposed research focuses on secondary growth, the radial growth of woody tree stems from the vascular cambium meristem. Secondary growth presents opportunities to understand fundamental aspects of tree growth that are of direct economic and environmental importance. This project will use genomic tools to characterize transcription factors that regulate gene expression during secondary growth in the model forest tree, Populus. This will allow for the use advanced computational methods to examine fundamental features of transcriptional regulation during secondary growth, including the role of combinatorial binding of transcription factors in regulating gene expression, and the topology of transcriptional networks. The outcomes of the research will lead to a fuller understanding of the genes and gene networks involved in secondary growth in trees, important to carbon cycling and ecology.
