Cassandra is a graduate student in the Nemhauser lab in the Biology department. She is interested in using CRISPR dCas9 and serine integrase technology to build externally responsive genetic circuits in plants, genetically engineering them for eventual applications in agriculture, medicine, and climate resilience. She aims to advance the field of plant synthetic biology and use the multicellular nature of plants for novel and exciting applications. Cassandra holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UW. Read More
As a graduate student in the lab of Jennifer Nemhauser in the UW Biology department, Eric characterized new constitutive promoters in plants and converted them into repressible logic NOR gates. Eric also studied relationships between promoter expression pattern and core promoter architecture through bioinformatics analysis. These works contributed to the growing field of plant synthetic biology. Eric holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Read More
The Nemhauser Lab is interested in understanding how signaling pathways fit into the broader contexts of time, location within an organism, and interaction with other signals. Specifically, we use a model plant called Arabidopsis thaliana to dissect the network by which seedlings change their form to take best advantage of their light environment. This process is called photomorphogenesis. Work from many groups over the past twenty years has produced a long list of factors linked to photoreceptors, the proteins that directly sense light and begin the process of photomorphogenesis. Read More