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                    BIOINFORMATICS COLLOQUIUM
               School of Computational Sciences
                    George Mason University
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Monitoring Gene Expression Profiles during Cold Acclimation in 
Blueberry under Field and Cold Room Conditions Using EST Libraries and 
cDNA Microarrays

                      Dr. Jeannie Rowland
                      Research Geneticist
                   USDA/ARS, Fruit Laboratory,
               Bldg 010A, 10300 Baltimore Avenue,
                BARC-West, Beltsville, MD 20705
                    rowlandj@ba.ars.usda.gov

                 Tuesday, October 4, 2005
                             4:30 pm
           Verizon Auditorium, Prince William Campus
 
 
                            Abstract

Environmental stresses, including low temperature extremes, reduce crop 
yields and impact the profitability and competitiveness of U.S. 
producers. The U.S. is the world’s leading blueberry (Vaccinium spp.) 
producer. However, the blueberry industry in the U.S. suffers from a 
lack of winter hardy and spring-frost resistant cultivars. Our 
laboratory has been using a genomic approach to increase our 
understanding of the genetic control of cold hardiness in blueberry to 
ultimately use this information to develop more cold hardy cultivars. 
Specifically, how EST libraries and cDNA microarrays are being used in 
a real-life situation, in our case, to monitor changes in gene 
expression associated with cold acclimation in blueberry under field 
and cold room conditions, will be discussed. Expression has been 
monitored and compared at multiple times during cold acclimation under 
both field and cold room conditions. The talk will emphasize generation 
of the ESTs, assembly into contigs, functional categorization of genes 
based on BLAST search results, preparation of microarrays and design of 
microarray experiments, analysis of the microarray data, and the need 
to confirm results by actual northern blots or quantitative RT-PCR. 
Using our EST libraries to develop EST-PCR markers for further 
saturating our genetic linkage map of blueberry and to ultimately 
identify QTL associated with cold hardiness will also be discussed.


                              BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Rowland earned her undergraduate degree in Biology from Georgia 
State University in Atlanta. Following her graduation, she worked for 
one year as a lab technician in the Microbiology Department of Emory 
University before beginning her graduate training at the University of 
Georgia, where she earned a doctoral degree in Genetics. (BS 1981; 
Ph.D. 1987). She then worked for approximately two years as a 
postdoctoral research associate for the USDA/ARS at the University of 
Florida, Plant Pathology Department. The focus of both her graduate and 
postgraduate work was on maize genetics.

Since 1990, Dr. Rowland has worked as a research geneticist at the 
USDA-ARS on isolation and characterization of environmentally and 
developmentally-regulated genes from blueberry. She has also developed 
molecular markers (RAPD, AFLP, and gene-derived EST-PCR markers) and 
used them for mapping, DNA fingerprinting, and genetic relationship 
studies in blueberry and strawberry. She developed the first genetic 
linkage map for blueberry and blueberry populations to be used for 
mapping chilling requirement and cold hardiness. She and collaborators 
established that inheritance of cold hardiness in blueberry can be 
explained by a simple additive/dominance model of gene action. In the 
past few years, she has developed an EST database for blueberry, 
currently comprised of approximately 2400 cDNA sequences, which have 
been made publicly available, and has initiated microarray experiments 
to identify which of these cDNAs are cold responsive. Dr. Rowland has 
published over 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts. 

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Refreshments are served at 4:00 pm. Find the schedule and directions at
http://www.binf.gmu.edu/colloq.html