Several members of the lab earned prestigious honors for this summer’s conferences. Paula Collado Cordon, Chi Kuan, and Hannah McMillian earned travel awards to attend this year’s 33th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research (ICAR), June 5th-9th, 2023 in Chiba, Japan. Paula presented a poster titled “From root to leaf: The effects of high soil salinity on the defense mechanisms of the phyllosphere”. Chi presented two posters, one from her work at Academia Sinica, tilted: “Turn over a new leaf: A single cell view of leaf epidermis in Arabidopsis”, and another in collaboration with Jonghum Kim, titled " Preserving salicylic acid-mediated plant immunity in a warming climate”.

Hannah presented a talk titled "Microbiome colonization leads to emergent plant phenotypes at elevated temperature”. She went on to win a presentation award for the talk! Kinya Nomura and Bradley Paasch also presented posters at ICAR.

Julian Liber will be travelling to Quito, Ecuador August 1st-4th to present a talk at the 4th Plant Microbiome Symposium, titled "Probing the leaf micro-environment with whole cell yeast biosensors to establish principles of microbiome coexistence". 

Hannah's NSF PRFB proposal titled "Understanding microbiome impact on plant performance in a warming climate" was recently funded and will address knowledge gaps in “temperature-microbiome-plant” triangular interactions to reveal underlying principles of emergent plant and microbiome function(s) in warming conditions. Congrats Hannah!

Shanice joined the He Lab as a postdoc in January 2022. Shanice’s graduate work focused on understanding the mechanisms by which free-swimming bacteria sense surface contact and transition to surface attachment (biofilm formation). She determined a mechanism by which cysteines in a type 4 pili cell-surface-associated protein senses surface contact and initiates a signal transduction cascade to regulate intracellular levels of the second messenger molecule c-di-GMP. In the He lab, Shanice is investigating how pathogenicity affects changes in the plant microbiome and how such changes contribute to disease development.

Tim joined the lab in October 2020 and has made several important contributions to microbiome and pathogenesis related projects in the lab. On top of being a brilliant scientist, Tim has been a wonderful colleague and lab citizen. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavor! 

Hannah's graduate work at Duke focused on the roles bacterial outer membrane vesicles play in plant systems. She found that these nanoscale proteoliposomes elicit immune responses in plants that can protect against future pathogen challenge. In the He lab, Hannah is looking forward to uncovering how temperature impacts the plant microbiome structure and function.

During his graduate studies at NYU, Comzit worked with social insects and used the Indian jumping ant as a model of study. Division of labor is crucial and stable in social insect communities; however, in jumping ants, caste switching can occur in a queenless colony. His research provided insight into the mechanisms underlying these unusual changes in ant behavior and longevity. He will be making a transition from the animal to the plant kingdom to figure out how humidity influences plant growth and disease susceptibility. 

Learn more about Rich's fellowship here!

Duke University welcomes the He Lab - read more here!