For the past 7 years I worked in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis on an exciting project investigating the microbiome of an isolated maize variety cultivated in the Sierra Mixe region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Interestingly, this variety of corn has been grown for generations by local communities without the use of synthetic fertilizers and was recently shown to acquire a significant portion of its nitrogen requirements from the air. Numerous plant species are known to utilize nitrogen from the air through close association with bacteria in their local environments called diazotrophs that carry out the process of biological nitrogen fixation. However, until the discovery of Sierra Mixe maize, nitrogen-fixation was not a trait known to be characteristic of maize. One of the biggest questions surrounding the discovery of these nitrogen-fixing corn plants has been, how and where is the nitrogen-fixation occurring? Multiple lines of evidence suggested that the site of nitrogen-fixation in The discovery of corn varieties capable of using nitrogen from the air through natural microbial associations opened the door for my doctoral research.

Check out this video for additional background information on the project:

Beginning in 2013, leading up to my PhD work, I collaborated as a Junior Specialist in the Bennett lab with analytical chemists from Professor Carlito Lebrilla’s lab to elucidate the structure of aerial root mucilage polysaccharide. As it turns out, this slimy muccous-like material secreted by the shoot-borne roots of Sierra Mixe maize provides both a rich energy source and a suitable environment for bacteria to perform nitrogen-fixation! After going through the process of getting into graduate school, I was then free to begin delving into the world of microbial genomics and bioinformatics - hooray! My project involved genomic and phenotypic characterization of over 500 microbial strains isolated from the aerial root mucilage of Sierra Mixe maize by the lab of Professor Bart Weimer.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve definitely learned a lot of bioinformatics and microbial genomics but there’s always more to learn and share. Over the course of my PhD, I had the opportunity to learn from such a diverse array of Professors. While I have certainly come to know an extraordinary amount of information related to plant development, cell biology and molecular biology, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology kind of just took over my life once my PI said, “Your project is going to be characterizing the genomes of the microbe collection.” When he told me this in the beginning I had no idea about how to make a genome sequence let alone analyze one. I think what is most intriguing about Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is that the tasks seem so complex and challenging to carry out, but once we dedicate our time and learn how to perform the tasks the rewards are endless. Perhaps the greatest gift I received from completing my PhD is my new-found obsession with learning as much as I can about Computational Biology and sharing what I can with others as time goes on…