Neal Stewart Plant Genetics Lab

08/08/2023

Ever thought about using plants to detect gamma radiation? This is the type of cutting-edge research Herbert students get to spearhead. 🌱🥔

Read more about PhD student Rob Sears and his phytosensor research at the link in our bio.

12/20/2021

Last week we celebrated our annual lab holiday party at Barley's Knoxville. We had a great time visiting with each other and celebrating the accomplishments of the year.

Congratulations to Shamira Sultana for winning the Ivan Racheff Paper of the Year on her paper entitled "Proteinase inhibitors in legume herbivore defense: from natural to genetically engineered protectants" in Plant Cell Reports.

What is a holiday party without an ugly sweater contest? Mikayla, a new Research Associate, won the ugly holiday sweater contest!

Happy Holidays from the Stewart Lab!

12/15/2021

Hot off the press!

Sustainability Trait Modeling of Field-Grown Switchgrass Using UAV-based Imagery was just published in Plants. Read all about how we are using drones to estimate lignin, chlorophyll, nitrogen, and rust in switchgrass.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide an intermediate scale of spatial and spectral data collection that yields increased accuracy and consistency in data collection for morphological and physiological traits than satellites and expanded flexibility and high-throughput compared to ground-based dat...

12/02/2021

"Proteinase inhibitors from legumes have the potential for use as protectants in response to pests and pathogens. Legumes have evolved Proteinase inhibitors that inhibit digestive proteinases upon herbivory resulting in delayed development, deformities, and reduced fertility of herbivorous insects. Legume Proteinase inhibitors have been overexpressed in plants to confer plant protection against herbivores..."

Read all about Shamira's paper discussing the use of proteinase inhibitors in herbivore defense!

Proteinase inhibitors (P*s) from legumes have the potential for use as protectants in response to pests and pathogens. Legumes have evolved P*s that inhibit digestive proteinases upon herbivory resulting in delayed development, deformities, and reduced fertility of herbivorous insects. Legume P*s (s...

10/26/2021

Bryce Trull and Shamira Sultana participated in the University of Tennessee Department of Plant Sciences Oral Presentation Competition this week. Bryce won second place with his presentation on Agroinfiltration of Soybean. Congratulations to Bryce and everyone else who competed!

10/21/2021

Check out our latest publication in Genes, "Novel Candidate Genes Differentially Expressed in Glyphosate- Treated Horsew**d (Conyza canadensis)." Great job to everyone involved!

The evolution of herbicide-resistant w**d species is a serious threat for w**d control. Therefore, we need an improved understanding of how gene regulation confers herbicide resistance in order to slow the evolution of resistance. The present study analyzed differentially expressed genes after glyph...

08/20/2021

Happy Birthday Plant Cell Reports! Dr. Stewart has been an editor with Plant Cell Reports since 2013 and took the role of Editor-in-Chief in 2020.

"While “biotechnology” and “plants” were just finding their synergy, Plant Cell Reports soon filled a niche for publishing on the topic. In 1981 the hot plant biotechnology topics included tissue culture, plant regeneration, protoplasts, horizontal gene transfer, haploid cell production, and biosynthesis of important compounds from cultured plant cells.... Arabidopsis was not a prominent topic, but it notably appeared in one article published in 1981 given its role of being one parent in an interspecific “parasexual” hybrid named Arabidobrassica (I.K. Komarnitzky and Yu. Yu. Gleba, Plant Cell Reports (1981) 1: 67–68). The next mention of Arabidopsis in the journal came full 7 years later, in 1988, and concerns its high-efficiency genetic transformation (R. Schmidt and L. Willmitzer, Plant Cell Reports (1988) 7: 583–586)."

Editorial Published: 23 July 2021 Plant Cell Reports turns 40 Günther Hahne1 & C. Neal Stewart2 Plant Cell Reports volume 40, pages 1297–1299 (2021)Cite this article 321 Accesses 1 Altmetric Metrics details The first issue of Plant Cell Reports was published in August 1981. The journal was founde...

08/04/2021

Our latest collaboration with Virginia Tech is investigating transgenic pollen dispersal. Mater's students Jessica Stockdale and Tyler Newton have set up two field sites. Jessica will be looking at the pollen dispersal of switchgrass and Tyler at to***co. Pollen will be collected downwind and dispersal models will be created. This work is being funded by the USDA BRAG program.

07/20/2021

Attending ASPB this week? Dr. Stewart will be giving a presentation entitled "Synthetic genomics for enhanced crop performance." His talk is this Friday the 23rd at 2:30pm ET. Be sure to tune in!

07/06/2021

The lab made it back to Barley's Knoxville for our first lab outing in over a year and a half! We are looking forward to celebrating our research more often!