How I ended up in botany was a complete fluke. Back in my second year of my undergrad, when I was still planning on medical school, I had built my schedule around a Greek history course I was interested in. As a result, I ended up (quite against my will) into taking intro to botany – I ended up loving it. I graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario with my Bachelor’s in Biology where my course load was focus on plant physiology. During my undergrad program I completed an NSERC-USRA/undergrad thesis in plant stress physiology. During this project, I studied root morphology modifications of Arabidopsis and a salt-tolerant relative Thellungiella in response to high salinity and phosphate stress. As well, I looked at phosphate stress in relation to iron toxicity. I had the pleasure of doing this work in the Weretilnyk Lab at McMaster where plant responses to osmotic stress are being studied using this halophyte Thellungiella.
When I graduated, I decided to try out a new area of botany and thus chose to do a Master’s in plant cell biology. Upon visiting the UBC campus during a summer vacation, I had decided I wanted to apply to UBC. This was, in part, due to the fact that there was an actual botany department here (which was exciting coming from a school where plant bio was extremely minor)!! After looking into the botany program, I found Lacey’s lab. Her work sounded exactly like the change I was looking for. It provided me with a new area of plant bio to learn as well as the opportunity to gain experience with new techniques.
The project I am now working on for my Master’s involves looking at cell wall component secretion. More specifically, I am looking at pectin secretion using seed coat cells as a model. This is due to the fact that seed coat cells secrete a large amount of pectinaceous mucilage during development. I am using a mutant with a novel mucilage phenotype which is a putative mislocalization of this mucilage, allowing us to study the proper secretion pathway. I am currently working on characterizing this mutant using various microscopy techniques.
