Project Summary
Our program seeks to enhance undergraduate and graduate biochemistry education at Rice University by identifying and mentoring undergraduates who have a talent and passion for research and more closely integrating undergraduate teaching with research. To expose students to research early, we will implement a seminar minicourse for freshmen. This course will consist of multiple small groups in which graduate students and postdocs will lead in-depth discussions of a recent research publication from a local laboratory. The course will culminate with a tour of the lab during which students will meet some of the authoring scientists and view the lab notebooks and equipment used in the research. This course seeks to counter the risk of losing prospective science students because of large introductory courses, where individualized attention is lacking and the excitement of science is more difficult to convey.

For sophomores, we will institute new open-ended lab modules, starting with a natural products biochemistry module. Students will work in pairs to subclone a cDNA encoding a previously uncharacterized plant terpene synthase, a diverse class of enzymes for which substrates can be deduced with reasonable certainty using sequence similarity. Students will express their enzyme in yeast, gather information about product structure using GC-MS, and write a final report. The modules will target second-semester sophomores and serve as gateways for interested students into more extensive research in faculty labs beginning in the summer following the sophomore year. In the faculty research groups, the students will be teamed with graduate student or postdoc mentors to continue the research started in the lab module and to prepare publications. Using lab modules as gateways into research labs provides an alternative to the current ad hoc mechanism by which undergraduates become involved in research, which may select against students who lack prior research experience.

The program will benefit undergraduates by giving them early exposure to research and the opportunity to conduct contemporary biological research at the interface with chemistry. Participating students will leave Rice with an enhanced appreciation for and understanding of the research process and knowledge of whether they would like to pursue a research career. Moreover, the program will provide graduate students and postdocs with opportunities to hone their teaching and mentoring skills, equipping them more fully to combine teaching and research effectively.

Research Summary
We use genetic approaches in Arabidopsis to elucidate regulatory processes important in plant growth and development, including the means that plants use to regulate levels of the hormone auxin. Our research group is characterizing Arabidopsis mutants by disrupting inputs to the active auxin pool to unravel the mechanisms by which plants regulate auxin levels and to determine how the various facets of auxin metabolism contribute to development. Through analysis of a subset of these mutants, we discovered that the interconversion of certain endogenous auxins is a peroxisomal process. This observation led to our study of peroxisome biogenesis and function using forward and reverse genetic approaches, in which we are uncovering the commonalities and distinctions among plant, microbe, and animal peroxisomes.

In addition, our group is studying the roles of microRNAs in plants. Recent evidence suggests that post-transcriptional regulation by microRNAs defines the extent of auxin signaling and response during development and in response to environmental cues. Working with the lab of Dr. David Bartel (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research), our group is deciphering functions of individual microRNAs and their targets.

A third research area involves triterpenoids, the polycyclic molecules that include sterols, hormones such as brassinosteroids, and diverse secondary metabolites that function in defense. In collaboration with Dr. Seiichi Matsuda (Rice University), the lab is integrating Arabidopsis reverse genetics, heterologous expression of cDNAs in yeast, spectroscopic and chromatographic structural determination, and gene expression analyses to elucidate triterpenoid biosynthetic pathways, control mechanisms, and biological functions.

Last updated September 2006