Office Address
1500 Gortner Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55108
United States
Sue Gibson
Professor
Plant and Microbial Biology
My research interests include molecular genetics; isolation and characterization of plant mutants defective in the ability to respond to soluble sugar levels; regulation of source-sink interactions, manipulation of indole alkaloid metabolism to increase production of anti-cancer agents; eQTL analysis of soybean composition and yield.
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Research interests
Our lab is taking a molecular-genetic approach to investigating the role of endogenous sugar levels in regulating plant gene expression and development. Sugars may be considered to be similar to hormones in that they are synthesized in one part of the plant and then transported to other parts of the plant where they affect gene expression, time of flowering, early seedling development and other plant processes. To learn more about the role of soluble sugar levels in regulating plant development, and to identify the signal transduction pathways between sugar and gene expression, we isolated mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana that are defective in their response to sugar. Currently, we are focusing our efforts on the sis3, sis8 and hac1 mutants that carry mutations in an ubiquitin e3 ligase, a protein kinase and a histone acetyl transferase, respectively. In addition to addressing basic scientific questions, a long-term goal of our research is to engineer more productive plants by altering the way that plants respond to sugar in order to manipulate source-sink interactions.
A second project in our lab is aimed at using genetic engineering to increase the levels of two anti-cancer agents, vincristine and vinblastine, in C. roseus (periwinkle).
A third project in our lab focuses on identifying soybean expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) that are involved in controlling seed yield or composition.