News

The phylogenetic and population genetic structure of symbiotic microorganisms may correlate with important ecological traits that can be difficult to directly measure, such as host preferences or dispersal rates.

Most class 3 fungal endophytes (sensu Rodriguez et al. 2009) belong to the Ascomycota; members of Basidiomycota are much more infrequently isolated. Endophytic Basidiomycota may be more common in foliage than currently indicated, but biases in identification methods (e.g., primer bias, culturing vs. environmental sequencing) may mask their true diversity and abundance as endophytes.

The Mechanical Engineering Capstone Seniors have successfully completed a flying drone that can cut and retrieve plant stems! This will help us sample and study plants growing in challenging terrains or leaves from the top of a redwood tree. The team benefited from a second year challenge and we are currently testing and improving safety and accuracy.

A confidence interval analysis of sampling effort, sequencing depth, and taxonomic resolution of fungal community ecology in the era of high-throughput sequencing.

In the proposed work, we will use newly designed fluorescence in situ hybridization probes coupled with mRNA in situ hybridization probes of key lignocellulose degrading enzymes to localize and characterize the enzymatic activity in situ by a model fungal endophyte - Lophodermium nitens - during three stages of fruiting body development in senescing pine needles.

Jake graduated from Purdue University and is now pursuing to study the systematics of Lophodermium.

Andres Jimenez Salinas will be exploring the biochemical changes of legume plants and its symbiont rhizobia bacteria under different environmental conditions, namely elevated CO2 and nitrate additions. Looking forward to working on more legume-rhizobia mutualism this summer!

The Oono lab hosted students from Girls Inc. through a new outreach program (Curie-osity) run by the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education to culture endophytes. Thanks for coming by! You're welcome back any time!