The purpose of my work is to study an innovative plant cell model, the soybean root hair cell, to investigate the transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of gene expression in response to environmental stresses. The integration of the epigenome and transcriptome at the level of a single cell model will also definitively increase our understanding of the impact of epigenetic regulation of gene expression.
The unique properties and functions of the soybean root hair cell (e.g. water and nutrient uptake, infection by symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria) makes this single cell type an attractive model to understand the genetic and epigenetic changes occurring in a plant cell in response to diverse stresses (e.g. drought, pH stresses, nutrient deprivation, etc.). My goal is to utilize this system to understand the role of various genetic and epigenetic regulatory circuits (i.e., transcriptome, transcription factor protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions, DNA methylome, histone acetylome and methylome, small RNA population) in modulating the development and physiology of a single plant cell type. Ultimately, my research will improve plant adaptation to environmental stresses to sustainably enhance crop production
