Plant Epigenetics

What we do:

Our study seeks to investigate the role different biochemical players play in regulating cold acclimation in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis is a model plant system widely used to study genetics. We specifically look at histone acetyltransferases and long non-coding RNA to better understand how genes are regulated.

How we do it:

We utilize qRT-PCR to measure the levels of gene expression in different genotypic backgrounds of Arabidopsis.

Our Goal:

This work will serve to help better expand the knowledge on epigenetic regulation in eukaryotic organisms as well as better understand cold acclimation in plants to help with climate change and growing crops.

Interested in learning more:

Email me at lwashco@muhlenberg.edu

What research is like?

Performing research during the academic year involves planning your experiments around when you have class I often outline my experiments in the morning and get set up during the day, do all of the pipetting and run experiments after class so that they are done running in the evening and the results can be analyzed.

Communicating our work

Communication of research projects are often done at poster sessions throughout the year with others in the field.