Leny Galvez, a doctoral student in the Mitra Research Group, will present “Engineering for Broad Spectrum Virus Resistance,” at 4 p.m., April 16 in 264 Keim Hall. The seminar is free and open to the public.
The Mitra Research Group is led by Amit Mitra, associate professor of plant pathology. The research team is aimed at gaining an understanding of gene expression and molecular basis of differentiation in the plant kingdom. He has developed a convenient plant vector-transformation system based on Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens and electroporation. With these systems, regulatory regions of several plant genes are currently being studied. Present efforts are centered on identifying DNA sequences controlling the expression of plant genes and on nuclear protein factors that bind to these regulatory sequences.