Danforth Center Names 2016 William H. Danforth Plant Science Fellow

St. Louis, Missouri, March 28, 2016 (Newswire.com) - The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced that Alexandra Asaro, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis has been named the 2016 William H. Danforth Plant Science Fellow. She is the second graduate student to receive the designation which supports outstanding Ph.D. students whose research demonstrates great promise for advancing plant science. The fellowship was endowed in honor of Dr. Danforth, founding chairman of the Danforth Center, by Dr. P. Roy Vagelos and his wife Diana Vagelos, longtime leaders in philanthropic giving for scientific and medical research and education.  

Drs. Vagelos and Danforth share a long friendship and many interests, including the potential for science to improve human health and wellbeing. They first met in 1966 when Vagelos joined the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine, where Danforth was Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs before becoming Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. Although Vagelos left the university in 1975 to pursue a career in industry, eventually serving as Chief Executive Officer of Merck & Co. Inc. from 1985 to 1994, he and his wife continue to have strong ties to the St. Louis region. When the Danforth Center was established in 1998, Danforth recruited his trusted friend and colleague to join the Board of Directors, where they worked together to advance the center’s mission, to improve the human condition through plant science. Vagelos retired from the board in 2014.

"The William H. Danforth Plant Science Fellowship is critical to helping talented young scientists like Alexandra pursue careers in plant science. Thanks to Roy and Diana Vagelos, she and others will have the opportunity to conduct their research with the guidance of outstanding principal investigators at the center."

James Carrington, Ph.D., President, Danforth Center

“The William H. Danforth Plant Science Fellowship is critical to helping talented young scientists like Alexandra pursue careers in plant science, said Danforth Center President James Carrington, Ph.D. “Thanks to Roy and Diana Vagelos, she and others will have the opportunity to conduct their research with the guidance of outstanding principal investigators at the center.”

Asaro is a third-year Ph.D. student at Washington University. Originally from St. Louis, she attended The University of Virginia, graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. Having previously done research on ion channel biophysics, Asaro decided to enroll in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics program at Washington University in 2013. When Asaro began her third rotation in the laboratory of Ivan Baxter, Ph.D., USDA-ARS research scientist and an associate member at the Danforth Center, she found a new interest in ionomics and computational analysis. To further pursue this interest, she transferred to the Computational and Systems Biology program and joined Baxter’s lab to do her dissertation research on genetic by environment interactions in the maize (Zea mays L.) ionome. 

Asaro’s work will develop an understanding of the mechanisms that shape ionomic variation among different environments. This knowledge is especially important for selective breeding, as optimization of specific traits requires consideration of cases in which genetic loci have varying effects depending on the environment. This work will also help to elucidate plant elemental signatures associated with particular environments or physiological states, providing a high-throughput means to characterize processes that are otherwise difficult to detect. In addition to single-element analysis, investigating genetic effects on multiple elements and environmental variation in multi-element effects will be imperative to understanding mineral nutrient homeostasis and effectively applying ionomics to agricultural practices.

Genetic by environment interactions are central to environmental adaptation, which is particularly important in plants as they must remain in a fixed location regardless of environmental changes. Asaro studies genetic by environment interactions in the maize ionome, the entirety of mineral nutrients and trace elements in an organism, using ionomics, the quantitative study of the ionome. The Baxter Lab runs a high-throughput ionomics pipeline, in which single seeds are profiled for 20 elements using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Asaro uses these profiles in combination with information on genetics and growth environment to study genetic effects on elemental regulation and variation in these effects across different environmental conditions. Her analysis considers the ionome not only as a collection of single elements, but also as an interacting network of elements, and includes multivariate approaches to model multi-element effects. She plans to implement ionomics in conjunction with other -omics methods, such as transcriptomics and metabolomics, to generate further insight into elemental regulation. 

About The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
Founded in 1998, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is a not-for-profit research institute with a mission to improve the human condition through plant science.  Research, education and outreach aim to have impact at the nexus of food security and the environment, and position the St. Louis region as a world center for plant science.  The center’s work is funded through competitive grants from many sources, including the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  To keep up to date with Danforth Center’s current operations and areas of research, please visit, www.danforthcenter.org, featuring information on Center scientists, news, and the “Roots & Shoots” blog. Follow us on Twitter at @DanforthCenter.