9318522 Kieber This a starter grant for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Plant Biology. Dr. Kieber has completed his tenure as the NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Ecker at University of Pennsylvania and is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Unversity of Illinois at Chicago. With this starter award, Dr. Kieber plans to initiate his independent research program with a long-term goal of understanding the mode of action of the plant hormone, ethylene. Specifically, Dr. Kieber will further characterize a mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana, ctr 1. This mutant is deficient in ethylene perception in both seedlings and adult plants. There is some evidence to indicate that the ctr1 gene product may encode for a kinase. It is hoped that the results from these studies will build the foundation for continued studies of the important problem in plant biology. ***
