Long
Sonneborn
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Read about the work of geneticist Sharon Long of Stanford University.
She will be presenting the IUB Department of Biology’s 23rd
annual Tracy M. Sonneborn Lecture, honoring the memory of the
long-time biology faculty member and geneticist, on Tuesday
(Oct. 21) at 4 p.m. in Myers Hall 130, IU Bloomington. Her topic
will be “Genetic and Genomic Studies of Rhizobium Symbiosis,”
a topic of interest not only to geneticists and plant biologists,
but to agronomists and others interested in environmental sustainability.
A reception will follow the lecture in the atrium of Jordan
Hall.
Long is dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and
the William Steere Jr.-Pfizer Inc. Professor of biological
sciences. She has pioneered the study of the mechanisms by
which bacteria of the genus Rhizobium infect legume
plants and establish a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis in root nodules.
She has identified and cloned the genes in R. meliloti
that are required for nodulation of alfalfa, characterized
their protein products and demonstrated that these genes are
regulated by the host plant; the implications of the findings
for agriculture and agronomy are far reaching. Long’s lab
group has recently designed a combined Rhizobium-Medicago
Affymetrix GeneChip for following the simultaneous changes
in gene expression in both the host and symbiont during the
formation of nitrogen-fixing nodules. Data generated using
this DNA chip are being used to construct a dynamic model
of gene regulation during the nodulation process.
Sonneborn “demonstrated simple Mendelism and established
the behavior of genes, nuclei and cytoplasm in the complex
processes of the life cycle,” wrote John L. Preer Jr. in this
National Academy of Science online biography:
http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/tsonneborn.html
The Sonneborn papers, 1922-1981, are housed at the Lilly
Library in Bloomington.
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