Ohio Plant Biotechnology Consortium

Consortium Institutions
Bowling Green State University  
Cleveland State University
  • Harry van Keulen:  The molecular mechanism of stress response by living organisms and its application to medicine and agriculture.
  • Joanne M. Belovich:  Acoustic Fields in Bioprocessing, Mathematical Modeling of Metabolism

Miami University
  • Susan R. Barnum: Evolution of nitrogen fixation genes in cyanobacteria, development of nitrogen fixing anaerobic cells (heterocysts) in cyanobacteria; molecular mechanisms involved in the establishment of symbiosis in cyanobacteria and plants
  • Annette Bollmann: Ecophysiology of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria; Culturing the unculturables
  • Alan B. Cady: Predatory arthropods as bicontrol agents in row crop agriculture
  • Xiao-wen Cheng: Host-range factors of baculovirus and gene transcription strategies of ascovirus
  • Carole Dabney-Smith:  Protein sorting, protein transport, protein-protein interactions, membrane protein structure/function, and organelle biogenesis
  • Richard E. Edelmann: Microscopy, ultrastructural imaging, mycology, and developmental morphology.
  • Daniel K. Gladish: Development of root systems, environmental effects on development (especially in roots) and woodwind instrument reeds
  • Carolyn Howes Keiffer : Plant physiological ecology, restoration ecology, American Chestnut ecology, and phytoremediation 
  • Mike Kennedy:  Structural biology, structural genomics, DNA repair, NMR-based metabonomics, NMR spectroscopy, x-ray crystallography
  • Racheal Morgan-Kiss: Polar Microbiology, Physiology, and Ecology
  • John Z. Kiss: Cell biology: Gravitropism in higher and lower plants, space biology, phototropism, ultrastructure and cryotechniques in electron microscopy
  • Q. Quinn Li:  Plant functional genomics, RNA biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and biotechnology.
  • Chung Liang:  Bioinformatics; plant genomics, proteomics and metabolomics; biological databases and data mining
  • Christopher Makaroff: Molecular and cellular biology of meiosis, chromosome structure, chemical detoxification  
  • Nicholas P. Money: Physiology of fungal growth, reproduction and pathogenesis
  • Richard Moore: Plant evolutionary biology, evolutionary genetics and genomics, duplicate gene evolution, evolution of sexual reproduction systems, evolution of plant development (evo-devo)
  • Nancy L. Smith-Huerta: Pollination ecology and floral biology 

The Ohio State University  
  • David Bisaro: Molecular basis of virus-host interactions, epigenetic regulation of gene expression.
  • Pierluigi (Enrico) Bonello: tree pathology and ecology, molecular plant-microbe and plant-insect interactions, tree resistance to pathogens and insects, plant transcriptomics/proteomics/metabolomics
  • Katrina Cornish: Bioemergent Materials
  • Biao Ding:  Structure and function of plasmodesmata, intercellular trafficking of proteins, RNAs, viruses and viroids.
  • Anne E. Dorrance: Field Crop Diseases, diseases of soybeans
  • Andrea I. Doseff:  Mechanisms involved in cell death during the innate immune response and oncogenic transformation.
  • John J. Finer: Horticulture and Crop Science, Gene transfer and gene expression in plants, promoter analysis.
  • David Francis: Plant breeding, genetics and genomics; plant-microbe interactions; nutritional quality of food plants; genetic fingerprints of selection in crops
  • Venkat Gopalan: RNA-protein interactions, protein-aided RNA catalysis, use of customized ribozymes to control gene expression in plants
  • Madge Graham: Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Soybean cell death and defense gene expression. Plant Innate Immunity
  • Terrence Graham: Molecular plant-microbe interactions, disease resistance, pathogenesis related proteins, plant metabolomics, gene silencing
  • Erich Grotewold: Plant gene regulatory networks & systems biology; subcellular trafficking of phytochemicals
  • JC Jang: Plant molecular biology, sugar and hormone signal transduction in plants, function and assembly of plant P-bodies and stress granules
  • Michelle Jones: Floriculture Molecular Biology
  • Rebecca Lamb:  Transcriptional regulation of inflorescence and floral development in Arabidopsis thaliana; the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase superfamily in plants.
  • David Mackey:  Function of the plant immune system, virulence promoting molecules of plant-pathogenic bacteria, and their interactions. 
  • Brian McSpadden Gardener: Beneficial plant-microbe interactions, biological control, bioprospecting, biopesticide development
  • Iris Meier:  Anchoring of Ran signal transduction in plants, nuclear pore and nuclear envelope protein function, genomic analysis of long coiled-coil proteins
  • Jim Metzger: Horticulture and crop science, environmental control of flowering
  • Tea Meulia: Research Associate Professor, Plant Pathology; Head of the Molecular and Cellular Imaging Center; Research interests include maize virus pathogenesis and mechanisms of host resistance at a molecular level
  • Andrew P. Michel:  Entomology, Population Genetics, Genetics of Adaptation and Speciation, Evolutionary Biology, Field Crops
  • Thomas Mitchell: Plant pathology, fungal biology and parasitism, molecular host-microbe interactions, genomics, bioinformatics
  • Feng Qu: Plant antiviral defenses, including RNA silencing and resistance gene-mediated defense, Interactions between different plant gene products (e.g. DCLs, AGOs, and RDRs), Engineering virus resistance in crop plants by enhancing antiviral RNA silencing
  • Sally Miller, Plant pathology (Wooster), plant pathology and pathogen diagnostics
  • M.G. (Peg) Redinbaugh: Plant pathology, virology, disease resistance, genetics
  • David Somers: Plant biology, molecular genetic analysis of the circadian clock and its regulation in plants
  • Lucy Stewart:  Plant virus insect transmission determinants and functional assessment of viral genomes, to understand how viruses move
  • Eric Stockinger: Horticulture and crop science, molecular-genetic basis of freezing tolerance in barley, wheat, and rye
  • Robert Tabita: Microbiology, regulation of carbon and nitrogen metabolism; bioconversion of carbon dioxide to biofuels
  • Christopher G. Taylor:  Parasitism and pathogenesis of nematodes, bacteria and plants, Molecular root-biotic interactions, nematology, disease resistance, transfer cell development, functional genomics 
  • DeshPal Verma: Molecular genetics, stress tolerance and nitrogen assimilation
  • Guo-Liang Wang: Molecular plant pathology, disease resistance and genomics 
  • Michael Zianni: Functional genomics of all organisms 

Ohio University
  • Harvey E. Ballard, Jr., Plant molecular systematics and evolution 
  • Ahmed Faik, Functional Genomics of Plant Cell Wall Metabolism
  • Stefan Gleissberg, Plant development and evolution
  • Michael Held, The Regulatory Mechanisms of Plant Cell Wall Biosynthesis
  • Marcia J. Kieliszewski, Hydroxyproline-rich structural glycoproteins of the plant cell wall: structure, function, and glycoprotein design
  • Brian C. McCarthy, Forest ecology, community dynamics, invasive species biology, restoration ecology
  • Allan M. Showalter, Molecular biology and biochemistry of plant cell wall proteins and the glycosyltransferase enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins
  • Arthur T. Trese, Molecular plant-microbe interactions
  • Morgan L. Vis,  Freshwater Algal Ecology and Evolution
  • Sarah E. Wyatt, Plant growth and development with an emphasis on the use of molecular and genetic tools to study plant responses to environmental stimuli
  • Lonnie Welch, Bioinformatics, high performance computing

University of Cincinnati
  • Regina Baucom: Plant evolutionary genomics and metagenomics. Agricultural weed adaptation to human-mediated selection via herbicide and transgenic technology.
  • Denis Conover: Botanical surveys and ecological restoration of wetland, forest, and prairie communities.
  • Theresa Culley: Plant population ecology and population genetics.  Evolution of plant mating systems and ecology/genetics of invasive species.
  •  Susan Dunford:  Water relations of phloem and xylem in various plants.  Drought tolerance
  • Edna Kaneshiro:  Microalgae in wastewater treatment and biofuel production.
  • David Lentz:  Paleoecology and paleoethnobotany of Mesoamerica, North America and India. Plant domestication, especially Helianthus annuus L., and ancient agroforestry practices.
  • Stephen F. Matter: Spatial population biology. Plant-animal interactions. Alpine conservation.
  • Steven H. Rogstad:  Plant population biology and population genetics.  Computer modeling of plant population genetic diversity conservation for threatened species.
  • Jodi Shann: Phytoremediation of contaminated soil. Ecological restoration and rehabilitation of contaminated sites. Allelopathy.

University of Toledo

Wright State University   
  • Volker Bahn:  Research combines high-level ecological theory and spatial analysis to address fundamental questions in ecology and to improve tools for applied ecology and conservation biology.
  • Donald F. Cipollini:  Physiology, ecology, and evolution of plant defenses to herbivores, pathogens and other environmental stresses, in the context of phenotypic plasticity.
  • Dan Krane:  Molecular evolution and the way that gene frequencies change over the course of time in populations of organisms.
  • Thomas P. Rooney:  Basic and applied problems in population ecology, community ecology, and conservation biology.
  • James R. Runkle:  Dynamics of plant communities and populations, especially concerning the ecological characteristics of woody species in the eastern United States.
  • John O. Stireman III:  Plant-insect and tri-trophic interactions, the processes of population differentiation and speciation, phylogenetic systematics, and the structure of ecological communities.

Youngstown State University