STUDENT: Keegan Ficarro

PROJECT ADVISOR: Dr. Megan Van Etten

ABSTRACT:

“Herbicide resistance is an intense area of study in biology, due to the importance of herbicides in agriculture. One widely used herbicide is glyphosate, which is used in the commercial product Round-Up®, since it culls most plants except for those genetically modified and sold by Monsanto. One organism of interest is Ipomoea purpurea, the common morning-glory, which is a common weed plant that has developed a resistance to glyphosate. I. purpurea is a closely related species of I. batatas, the sweet potato, and is ideal for identifying likely areas of interest with regards to glyphosate resistance due to its ease of mass growing. For this study, RNA-seq data generated from an experiment that explored the effects of glyphosate on I. purpurea, was analyzed, assembled, annotated and differential expression between morning-glories that were sprayed with glyphosate and those that were not sprayed was measured. Reported here are the results of differential expression analysis and candidate regions that bear further investigation, as well as applications moving forward.

For this study, the analysis, assembly, and measurement of differential expression were performed by Keegan Ficarro, and the annotation of assembled transcripts was performed by Dr. Van Etten.”