The Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology's weekly Plant Pathology 250 seminar series is presented this week by:

Antara Chakravarty

Seminar Title: “Capsid Dynamics of Tripartite Brome Mosaic Virus Assembled Independently In Vivo"

Biography: : Antara is a fourth year PhD candidate in Prof. ALN Rao’s lab studying viral assembly. She received her M.S. in Molecular Microbiology from Hyderabad Central University, India, where she worked on the replication and assembly of Melon Necrotic Spot virus. While at HCU she developed an interest in plant virology and currently her research is focused on the dissection of assembly mechanism in RNA viruses pathogenic to plants and humans. Recently, she has been developing a novel and robust in vivo agroinfiltration based strategy to assemble and characterize three independent virion particles of tripartite Brome Mosaic Virus

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Claudia Castro 

Seminar Title: “Exploring the role of an endoglucanase in the biofilm development of Xylella fastidiosa"

Biography: Claudia is a third year PhD student in Dr. Caroline Roper's lab. She received her B.S. in Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona where she worked on pollen-female gametophyte interactions under Dr. Ravishankar Palanivelu. Her research interests focus on the biofilm development of Xylella fastidiosa, the causal agent of Pierce's disease of grapevine, and lipopolysaccharide-induced plant defense priming against Xylella.