Associate Professor of Biology Natalie Nannas recently received a Biology Learning Objectives, Outreach Materials & Education (BLOOME) grant through the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB). According to the description on the ASPB website, the grant “funds projects to advance youth, student, and general public knowledge and appreciation of plant biology.”
Nannas said the grant will be used for her ongoing project titled “Mendel and the Mysterious Case of Maize Chromosomes: a game-based module to teach middle school students genetic inheritance using Zea mays.” In addition to the students who worked on this project during the summer, Nannas’ Seminar in Genetic Medicine students, and those in her Advanced Genetics course, will continue the work this year.
The Association for Biology Laboratory Education awarded Nannas the Roberta Williams Grant for her project “Breaking Mendelian Genetics with Selfish Chromosomes: Novel Screen of Zea mays Landraces for Abnormal Chromosome 10.” She has had summer research students, now senior thesis students, working on this project as well. Next semester, students in her Advanced Genetics course will join the project.
In August, Nannas’ paper, “Chromosome Biology: Too big to fail,” was published in the Cell Press journal, Current Biology. In the paper, she discusses recent developments in the field of chromosome biology, specifically recapping a study focused on engineered mega-chromosomes and their impact on the spindle – the cellular machinery that pulls chromosomes apart.
