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

Ye Xu

Seminar Title: “Mechanisms Underlying the Subcellular Localization of Arabidopsis AGO1"

Biography: Ye is a fourth-year PhD student in Xuemei Chen's lab. Her research focuses on dissecting the mechanisms governing the action of a small noncoding RNA in Arabidopsis, specifically on indentifying the biological significance of the ER-associated RNAi pathway.

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Nuttapon (Nat) Pombubpa

Seminar Title: “Exploring Characteristics Structuring Biocrust Microbial Community in Mojave Desert"

Biography: Nat is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Jason Stajich’s lab. He received his Bachelor’s degree with a double major in Molecular and Cellular Developmental Biology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015. Then, he joined the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology at the University of California Riverside in Fall 2015, working under the supervision of Professor Jason E. Stajich. His research focuses on biological soil crust (biocrust), desert fungal diversity, and microbiome. He is currently working on using next generation amplicon sequencing to explore the composition of microbial communities and to investigate spatial and temporal patterns on biocrust microbiome in Mojave Desert.