Prof. Garcia-Ruiz: Tagging Potyvirus rapae proteins and functional testing

Plant Pathology
Faculty Advisor
Hernan Garcia-Ruiz
Contact Email hgarciaruiz2@nebraska.edu
Website
Advisor College:
Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
Potential Student Tasks
  • Cloning to add epitope tags to individual viral proteins in the context of an infectious clone.
  • Generate Alphafold models of protein 3D structures.
  • Test pathogenicity of virus clones with proteins that have been tagged.
  • Measure protein and RNA accumulation in virus-infected plants.
Student Qualifications
  • Curiosity and interest in science.
  • Dependability, commitment, determination.
  • Highly responsible.
Training, Mentoring, and Workplace Community

Students will be mentores by the PI in the context of a team that includes graduate students and other undergraduate stundents. Mentoring includes inquiry-based and deliberate practice with a focus on scientific discovery.
Available Positions
2

Potyvirus rapae (turnip mosaic virus, TuMV) is widely used as a model system in plant-virus interaction studies. The TuMV RNA genome encodes 11 proteins, some of which remain poorly characterized. Studying individual proteins in isolation may not recapitulate native expression levels, subcellular localization, and interaction with host factors during virus replication and movement. An alternative approach is to tag individual viral proteins in the context of an infectious clone. Epitope tags may alter protein functions and affect viral replication, movement, or a combination of essential steps, thus leading to changes in pathogenicity. Because they have central roles in viral infection. Here seek to tag and characterize the effect of individually tagging the all TuMV proteins  with a 6His-3xFLAG tag at the the N- or C terminus within a TuMV infectious clone carrying coding sequences for the green fluorescent protein (TuMV-GFP). Pathogenicity will be measured in Nicotiana benthamiana and Arabidopsis thaliana plants.