Subscribe on iTunes | Android | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Spotify | RSS feed
Show Notes & Resources Mentioned:
- Spokesman-Review Article, “WSU researchers identify protein that may help crops survive climate change“
- Horsetail
- Downy Brome
- Dr. Andrei Smertenko website
- Dr. Karen Sanguinet faculty page
Contact Information:
Contact Dr. Karen Sanguinet via email at karen.sanguinet@wsu.edu.
What is a podcast?
For those of you who are newer to the medium, a podcast is like a pre-recorded radio show. In the same way that you turn on a talk radio show, you have to turn on a podcast. The major difference is that while our cars are equipped to find radio frequencies, they are not built to accommodate direct access to podcasts. On your smartphone or computer with internet access (since the files tend to be on the larger side), you can discover podcast shows of any kind, in any field, on any topic.
Listed above are some of the most used podcast hosts. iTunes and the iTunes Podcast app are preinstalled on your iPhone and are the simplest tools to use. You simply search for “WSU Wheat Beat Podcast” in the search bar, hit “subscribe” and the download arrow, and listen whenever it’s convenient for you.
If you use an Android or use another type of smartphone, you will need to find a different podcasting app because those devices don’t come with a preinstalled app like Apple. If you don’t know which podcast app you’d like, simply hit the “Android” link above and it will show you to several Android podcast apps for you to choose from.
After you download an episode, you can listen without using data any time of day. Our goal is to post a new podcast every other Monday. Your podcast app should automatically load our new episodes and download them for you (on WiFi), hands-free if you choose that in the app settings.
If you have further questions about what a podcast is, which app is best for you or need more assistance with getting started with podcasts, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Episode Transcription:
Drew Lyon: Hello. Welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers from WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production. If you enjoy the WSU Wheat Beat podcast do us a favor and subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcasting app and leave us a review while you’re there so others can find the show too.
[ Music ]
Drew Lyon: My guest today is Dr. Karen Sanguinet. Karen is an assistant professor of crop physiology. She joined WSU and the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences in May 2014 after a brief stint as an assistant professor at Iwate University in Japan. Her research program focuses on root development and root system architecture in temperate grasses, with a focus on cold and drug tolerance. Her group also works on the basic molecular underpinnings of hormone signaling and crosstalk with the cell wall that drives growth. She teaches an undergraduate crop physiology course on how plans interact with the environment. Hello, Karen.
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Hi, Drew.
Drew Lyon: So I was reading an article that came out May 23rd in the Spokesman-Review that talked about MAP20. For such a tiny little thing, it seemed to have a large effect on plants. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what MAP20 is and why you’re excited about it.
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Sure. So MAP20 is a protein. And MAP stands for not a map on your wall, but microtubule associated protein number 20. This protein is involved, we know, with vascular differentiation in trees. But we didn’t really know what it did in annual plants. And we didn’t really know its mechanism of action. It’s really interesting because it is a target — our proposed target of an herbicide that’s used to treat horsetails and orchards. So under Andre, shortly after both joining WSU, thought we would talk about research ideas and MAP20 came up. And we both have worked done and are interested in cell walls and cellulose biosynthesis inhibitors. And this cellulose biosynthesis inhibitor called 260CB is thought to act — its mode of action is through MAP20. At least, that was the thought. But no one had made a loss of function mutant in MAP20 to see what it actually did. So we were really interested in the interaction between the hormone and cellulose biosynthesis. Oh, the hormone — the protein, excuse me.
Drew Lyon: Okay. And Andre being Dr. Andre Smertenko —
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Smertenko, yes.
Drew Lyon: — who we’ll have as our guest next time on the weekly podcast. So can you describe for our listeners how you determine the function of a gene or a protein?
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Sure. So in order to prove that a given protein performs a certain function, you essentially have to break it and see what happens to the plant. And there are different ways of breaking it. It happens in nature via spontaneous mutation. This is why some plants are susceptible to certain pathogens and others are not, why some plants develop resistance to herbicides, which is probably something that you get to talk about and deal with a lot, Drew. So we took the approach of manipulating the expression of this particular gene that makes a functional protein in the lab. So you can think of a gene or DNA as the blueprint. And then you have the materials to build the building or the protein. And the materials are essentially the RNA molecule. And we designed a micro-RNA. So it’s a little, small, short RNA sequence that binds to messenger RNA that makes the protein. And we use that tool to reduce the amount of messenger RNA in protein in the plants to see what MAP20 does. And we did that in my lab by making transgenic plants.
Drew Lyon: Okay. Wow. That sounds like a complicated process and one that some people may wonder about. How long does it take you to make a transgenic plant in the lab?
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: So the process from generating the construct to transforming the plant takes about six months. But to get advanced populations, multiple independent lines, confirm the incisions, takes on the order of about two years.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So you and Andre were busy working on this for quite a while. And —
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Six years from project initiation to essentially publication. Yeah.
Drew Lyon: Wow. So that really was a vision that you had to really stick with for a while to come to some kind of conclusion on.
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Yeah. It’s definitely and has been kind of a labor of love. We — it’s what we call kind of a side project or something we were both really interested in that we didn’t have specific funding for but wanted to explore together because we were just really interested and curious about the question. And it turned out to be a very interesting and unexpected result.
Drew Lyon: So the paper that you published on this work used a model plant, brachypodium distachyon. Can you tell me about this plant and why you used it and why it’s important?
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Sure. Brachypodium distachyon, the common name is purple false brome. And it’s a close cousin of wheat and barley. But it’s also a cousin of downy brome.
Drew Lyon: Wow. You’ve talked about a couple of different weeds here that are I’m interested in. [ laughter ]
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Right? You had no idea how interconnected our research areas are. [ laughter ] So brachypodium distachyon was selected as a model for temperate C3 grasses or cold season grasses that grow in this part of Washington. And it was selected as a model because it’s got a very small nonrepetitive genome. And the plants are small and compact, have a short lifecycle. So they’re easy to grow, manipulate and get several generations. So it’s easy for genetics. It’s easy for plant transformation and functional analysis.
Drew Lyon: Okay. And then you hope that discoveries in this plant will translate to other plants —
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Right. So the growth pattern, the physiology, and the genome organization in grasses is pretty consistent. Grass genomes have — I’m getting really technical here. So sorry to the listener. But the way you can think about it is that the patterns of their genomes are laid out. So you think of beads on a string, which is what I use to symbolize DNA and then the specific genes. Those beads are organized in the same order in most grasses. Scientifically, we call that genome collinearity. So it means that the order of genes is pretty much the same. So if you find a gene and you find out its function in one organism, you know exactly where that is in another organism. So if you find it in brachy, you can map genes in weed. And brachypodium, initially, has been a really great model for trying to identify specific genes that confer disease resistance to viruses and other pathogens.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So your colleague, Dr. Smertenko, will be on our next podcast. We’ll go a little more in depth on what you found. But can you give our listeners a little teaser on what he’s going to talk about? What was so exciting about this MAP20?
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Sure. We were really interested in MAP20 and how it was interacting with cellulose biosynthesis in a cell wall. What we didn’t anticipate is that it had a very specific role and localized to specialized structures in the xylem called pit membranes. And in our mutant plants, we see that the pit membrane size is altered. And as a result of this change in pit membrane size, the plants do not recover well from drought or water withholding. And there’s not a lot known about — a few molecular characters have been identified that are involved in pit growth and formation. But this was really a new role for the MAP20 protein and one we didn’t anticipate.
Drew Lyon: Okay. Very good. So our listeners who find that intriguing as I did can listen in to our next podcast. So if people want to learn more about this, there’s this Spokesman-Review article on May 23rd. Is there anywhere else they could go to learn a little bit more about this and your work? Do you have a website where you keep this? Or —
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Yeah. They can go to my website or Andre’s website. We are in the process of publishing another article for a Colombian Basin Magazine. And we’ve recorded with another radio journalist as well for the PNW.
Drew Lyon: Okay. And your website is?
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Karen Sanguinet — so it’s the Crop and Soil Sciences website and my name, Karen Sanguinet, after that.
Drew Lyon: Okay. So css.wsu.edu and then look for your name.
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Yes.
Drew Lyon: Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much, Karen. Appreciate learning more about this. I know when I read it, I thought that was very interesting. So I appreciate you sharing some of that information with us today.
Dr. Karen Sanguinet: Absolutely.
[ Music ]
Drew Lyon: Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcasting app. If you have questions or topics, you’d like to hear on future episodes please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu –(drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.