Hannah Will

My research is focused on the genome of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. As we seek to gain a broad understanding of Arabidopsis, it is necessary to compare different ecotypes to analyze differences in how they form genetic responses to the environment. Ultimately, the goal is to identify more resilient plants. I compared the whole genomes of two Arabidopsis ecotypes, Columbia-0 (Col) and Landsberger (Ler), to see how their responses to foreign biological stimuli differ. I identified genes that were activated by a specific transcription factor (TF) called TGA5 by using peak-to-gene analysis on genomic data generated by my lab. I then performed gene ontology analysis (GO) to identify the biological processes present in both gene lists, which gave insight into the function of those genes. Using the gene lists and the GO terms, I compared the effect of TGA5 in Col and Ler. While further analysis is needed, it’s clear from the GO analysis that the two ecotypes use TGA5 differently when responding to foreign stimulus. There were 4825 genes that overlapped between the two genomes and ~2000 genes for each ecotype that did not overlap. Finally, I performed whole genome alignment to create an aligned visualization of the two genomes. This alignment, along with the analysis of the TGA5 genes, gives further context to the similarities and differences between the Col and Ler ecotypes. It will also serve as a starting point for further research by my lab. 

Paper: A Comparative Analysis of TGA5 in Arabidopsis Ler and Col Ecotypes