Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Nasim Sadeghian Sciences

Cloning of Extended Auricle 1 (eta1): A Maize Leaf Developmental Mutant

Two fundamental questions in both plant and animal development are how patterns are formed and how cell fates are determined. The maize leaf provides an elegant model for examining these questions because its development is well characterized and its use as a genetic system is well established. Nasim will investigate the role of the gene eta1 (extended auricle1) in maize leaf development. The project entails a two-pronged approach to cloning eta1, a gene affecting the development of the maize leaf auricle. One approach will be map-based cloning with the molecular markers simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs). The second approach will be co-segregation analysis of putatively transposon tagged eta1 alleles. The mutant phenotype of eta1 may lead us to understand how the fates of cells are determined and how patterns arise. The project will constitute Nasims senior honors thesis in Molecular and Cell Biology.

Profile image of Nasim Sadeghian
Major: Molecular and Cell Biology
Mentor: Mentor: Michael Freeling, Plant and Microbial Biology
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