Annual Lecture

When:  Mar 21, 2017 from 16:00 to 17:00 (ET)
Associated with  Oakland University

The Oakland University chapter of Sigma Xi is hosting their annual lecture. The presentation will be in Banquet Room A of the Oakland Center from 4:00-5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2017. This year, the guest speaker is L. Curtis Hannah. The title of his presentation is: Genetically Engineered Corn: A case for Genetically Modified Organisms in worldwide food sustainability.

Curtis Hannah, PhD is a University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) Professor. His appointment is in the Horticultural Science Department that is part of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at University of Florida in Gainesville. His research interests include the molecular-genetics of starch biosynthesis in higher plants; the effects of introns and transposons on gene expression and on the organization of the genome.

The corn seed represents an ideal experimental playground. The seeds are large and easy to examine which makes it easy to peruse subtle and not so subtle genetic differences. Interesting studies have focused on the huge collection of mutants that change the size, shape and texture of the seed. His lab focuses on the mutants affecting the synthesis of starch, the major seed component. The research is multifaceted; they study adenosine diphosphoglucose pyrophosphorylase, a rate limiting enzyme in the starch biosynthetic pathway. They use transposable elements as site-specific in vivo mutagens to alter the regulatory properties of the enzyme. They also use conventional site-specific mutagenesis and expression in bacteria to fine-tune interesting mutants first found in the corn plant. His lab studies spontaneous mutants for their own sake.  Recently, they found a transposable element in one starch gene, termed a Helitron.  Subsequent studies by others have shown that Helitrons underlie much of the sequence diversity in maize. In collaboration with others, they are determining the number of Helitrons in various maize lines and deciphering the mechanism by which these travel through the genome.

Location

Oakland Center
Banquet Room A
Rochester, 48309

Contact

Kathleen Lesich
586-350-6870
lesich@oakland.edu