One of our TPC members, Gina Pham (Buell lab), will practice communicating the big ideas of her research on “Cultivated potato: introduction and use of genomic resources to study allelic expression” by sharing them with The Pub Club this Friday. Gina will begin by providing a general overview of potato use and consumption, how potato compares to other more familiar plant systems in terms of the genetic resources we have, and her work on allele-specific expression and copy number variation in potato. She will then give a brief overview of future work to simplify genetic studies in potato using dihaploids.

Gina is a graduate student in Mug Club’r Dr. Robin Buell‘s laboratory. She is “currently working on genome analyses of wild and cultivated potatoes with the goal of completing functional studies facilitated by genomics.” She is broadly interested in “polyploid plant genetics, plant genomics, and plant molecular genetics.” Plant biotechnology is one major theme that drives her scientific research.

Diverse Skills targeted: research, communication and critical thinking