Curators' Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences
Division of Biological Sciences
Bioinformatics, Cell & Molecular Biology, Genetics & Plant Breeding,
Research
Research interests of his laboratory include structure and behavior of chromosomes, centromere epigenetics, heterosis, polyploidy and aneuploidy using maize as the model organism. We study the effects of genomic imbalance (extra or missing chromosomes) on gene expression, the phenotype, evolutionary processes and heterosis. A second area of interest is the drive mechanism and genomic conflict of the supernumerary B chromosome of maize. A third topic of interest is engineered minichromosomes and rapid transformation and gene editing in maize. In general, the laboratory is interested in the consequences of dosage sensitive gene regulatory mechanisms in multicellular eukaryotes.