Last updated Tuesday, March 18, 2021
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FSC Shares Research Grant with Rutgers University
August 31, 2020
Dr. Kerry Lutz
Dr. Kerry Lutz, associate professor of Biology, is co-recipient of a two-year, $300,000 EAGER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). EAGER grants are awarded to innovative, but high-risk projects, and are for two years.
The grant, “EAGER: Re-engineering Agrobacterium for T-DNA Delivery to Chloroplasts,” began this month. Farmingdale received more than $20,000 of the grant, which will go to support two undergraduate research interns who will perform high-impact research with Dr. Lutz during the fall and spring semesters. Next summer they will spend 10 weeks at Rutgers Univeristy, FSC’s partner in the grant. It is the second grant the two institutions have shared.
Says Dr. Lutz: “Chloroplast transformation allows scientists to modify the DNA within the chloroplasts of plants to aid in studying important plant processes, such as photosynthesis. It is a labor intensive process that is not routine in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana.
“The goal of the project is to develop an efficient, simplistic approach for Arabidopsis chloroplast transformation. This will be accomplished by re-engineering Agrobacterium – commonly used to transform the nuclear genome of plants – for transformation of the chloroplast genome. If we are successful, this will allow for widespread use of chloroplast transformation in Arabidopsis, which will have a major impact on basic science and applications in biotechnology.”
