Category Archives: Uncategorized

Randall Ruyle, a senior student from San Marcos High School, spent a day in the lab for his job shadowing on Feb. 2, 2016. He followed various activities in the lab including sitting in Cell Physiology Lecture and Lab and watching Yogi’s genomic DNA extraction. 

While unofficial, a new funding is expected in early 2016, which will support the research program for 5 years. More details will be provided soon.

Update: Dr. Kang received the NSF-CAREER award entitled “Characterization of epigenetic factors and their regulatory roles in modulating transposable elements, plant immunity and transgenerational inheritance”. This award will provide much needed research money for five years for many exciting experiments looking into the relationship between stress and adaptation in plants. 

Rebecca and Nicole presented their research in Gulf coast undergraduate research symposium hosted by Rice University. Ji Chul and April have advised their research activities over this summer. Their presentation titles are as follows:

• Rebecca: Arabidopsis MED9, a putative mediator protein for RNA polymerase II, physically interacts with MORC1
• Nicole: Characterization of Chromatin-Remodeling Factors In Plant Immune Responses

The Doctoral Research Fellowship from Texas State’s graduate college was awarded to Yogendra. This fellowship will further support his research on characterization of transposon activities under biotic stress.

Yogendra presented his work on genome accessiblity in response to biotic stress at the ASPB meeting on July 2015. 

Jessica Torres (pictured in the right) from San Antonio College interned this summer under April’s guidance. She worked on a project characterizing several chromatin remodeling factors associated with plant immunity. Matt Randal and Edgar Rodriguez, the past interns, were also pictured in the left.

Lockhart, Texas, is known as the BBQ capital. We dined at Kreuz Market, one of the BBQ restaurants in Lockhart on July 2015.  

• Yogendra Bordiya: Colene Drace Cell Biology Award; Howard D. Schulze Biology Scholarship
• Ji Chul Nam: Certificate for Academic Excellence
• April Bonnard: Department of Biology Colloquium Award
• Mario Aguilar: Certificate for Academic Excellence
• Rebecca Kilbourn: Certificate for Scholarship

Yogendra and Dr. Kang will travel to Minneapolis this July for the ASPB (Americann Society of Plant Biologists) meeting. Yogendra will be supported by Graduate College. Dr. Kang won the ASPB Recognifion Travel Award, a full ride fellowships to attend ASPB’s annual meeting. Dr. Kang will also chair ‘Epigenetic’ section for the meeting.

April Bonnard won the best presentation award at the annual department colloquium on April 17, 2015. The presentation was entitled ‘Characterizations of chromatin remodelling factors in disease resistance in plant immunity‘.