SAUR Inhibition of PP2C-D Phosphatases Activates Plasma Membrane H+-ATPases to Promote Cell Expansion in Arabidopsis
Author Profile
Angela K. Spartz and Hong Ren
Angela K. Spartz
Current Position: Research Associate, Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota.
Education: PhD: Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and Genetics, University of Minnesota.
Non-scientific Interests: Gardening, writing children's and young adult fiction, hanging out with my kids.
I was born in, raised in, and aside from a brief stint in Florida, have lived in Minnesota all my life. Early on in my academic career I wanted to go into veterinary medicine, but that changed when I discovered the fascinating world of genetics. After obtaining my B.S., I decided to go to graduate school where I studied alternative splicing in the nematode, C. elegans. From there, my interest in plants led me to seek a post-doctoral position in Dr. William Gray's lab where I began my work on the SAUR proteins. It has been a long and arduous road to discovering the function of these proteins. The genetic redundancy in this gene family was a huge obstacle to overcome, and several of the phenotypes that we observed in GFP-SAUR19 overexpressing plants puzzled us until Dr. Gray made the connection with the H+ATPase. There are still many aspects of the auxin-SAUR protein connection left to discover, and I'm eager to see where it will lead us.
Hong Ren
Current Position: Post-Doctoral Associate, Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Education: PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Department of Biology, Indiana University-Bloomington.
Non-scientific Interests: Reading, traveling, and playing basketball.
I was born in China, and came to the US for my graduate and postdoctoral training. I am interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying hormonal regulation of plant growth and development. I had my graduate training in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Estelle at Indiana University-Bloomington, and had my first post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Joanne Chory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. One fundamental question in plant biology that has fascinated me for many years is how cell expansion is regulated by the growth-promoting hormones auxin and brassinosteroids. I am excited by the opportunity to conduct research understanding the mechanisms of auxin-regulated cell expansion via acid growth in the laboratory of Dr. William Gray at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. I am currently investigating how the SMALL AUXIN UP RNA (SAUR) proteins integrate the auxin and brassinosteroid pathways to regulate cell expansion and plant growth.