After opening in summer 2022, the Nett Lab will hold an Open House on Friday, December 8. The event will be open to the extended MCB community, including both scientists and non-scientists, and will introduce several of the Nett Lab’s projects. The lab is broadly interested in how plants synthesize various molecules with potential uses in medicine and agriculture, as well as studying the activities of plant-produced enzymes and developing ways to produce those compounds in other plants. The open house will include lab tours, Friday@4 talks by postdoc Jaime Martinez Grundman and research assistant Andrea Loya Castillo in BioLabs 1080, and a poster session during TGIF.
The Nett Lab Open House is part of a series hosted by the Community Task Force (CTF) on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. The overarching goal is to improve science communication within the department and to give everyone a sense of what labs in the department are working on.
Current projects in the lab include studying small molecules produced by clubmosses, trying to understand how two distantly related plants build similar compounds, exploring the surprising functions of an evolutionarily conserved enzyme, and investigating whether an important insect hormone can be synthesized in plants.
There will be two sessions of hour-long lab tours, one starting at 1:00 PM and the other starting at 2:00 PM. At the beginning of each tour, all participants will meet in BioLabs 3036 for an introduction to the lab. Lab members will take participants to the research stations that introduce what plant-derived chemicals the lab is interested in, demonstrate how the researchers can use bacteria to manipulate plants, explain Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS), and highlight some of the non-plant organisms used in the lab. Sign-ups for the tours are here. To ensure everyone is accommodated, signing up in advance is required.
The afternoon will culminate with two Friday@4 Talks in BioLabs 1080. Postdoc Jaime Martinez Grundman and research assistant Andrea Loya Castillo will present their research.
A poster session at TGIF will follow. Please stop by, mingle, and ask the Nett Lab members questions about their projects.
We hope you’ll be able to attend and find out more about the Nett Lab’s research!
