About Me
I did my undergraduate degree in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). After graduating, I continued on at UCLA as a lab technician in Dr Siobhan Braybrook’s group before starting working towards my PhD with Dr Sarah Robinson.
Research Abstract
Plants grow and develop throughout their lives, creating complex morphology through cell expansion and cell division. How plants control these processes is a pressing and unanswered question in the field of developmental biology.
My PhD project seeks to investigate the regulatory relationships between three factors known to impact plant growth: hormonal signalling, mechanical feedback, and cell division. While all three factors are known to contribute to growth regulation, how each feeds back on the others is currently unclear.
To begin to unravel this complex process, I study cell division in Arabidopsis hypocotyls, an organ with very little endogenous division, and use inducible lines that increase cell division frequency.
To investigate mechanical properties, I use Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Automated Confocal Micro Extensometer (ACME). AFM allows for cell wall scale measurement of stiffness, while ACME operates at the whole organ scale.
