Long
Sonneborn
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And 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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