I am
originally from Wainwright Alberta where I grew up on a grain farm. My interest
in plants started early with my Dad around the farm and Mom around the garden.
I built a greenhouse out of windows salvaged from an old house and worked at a
commercial greenhouse through high school. I did my BSc in Botany at U of C in
Calgary. Early in my undergrad I worked in northern Alberta peatlands studying
the vegetation community, carbon cycling and simulated climate change scenarios
with Dr. Maria Strack. I used dendrochronology, forest
mensuration and biomass samples to quantify the change in biomass and
vegetation community following artificial drying of rain fed bogs.
For my
undergraduate Honors thesis, I moved to Dr. Marcus Samuel’s lab where I worked to demonstrate
conserved functionality of Abscisic Acid Insensitive 3 (ABI3) between
Arabidopsis and Canola.
In my MSc
at the Samuel lab I continued work with ABI3 in particular its ability to
modulate the seed degreening pathway in Canola. I generated and characterized
ABI3 overexpressing Canola lines for their frost tolerance as this would be a
valuable agronomic trait. Significant losses are incurred when Canola crops are
damaged by frost resulting in seeds that remain green at maturity resulting in
low quality oil.
I joined
the Samuels lab here at UBC in January of 2017. I had found myself asking more
and more questions about the basic biochemistry and cell biology of my previous
project which is part of what led me to this lab. My research here is focused
on lignin, more specifically how monolignols are transported from within the
cell where they are manufactured to the cell wall domains where they are
eventually polymerized into the lignin polymer and permanently reside. It is
likely that the transport and management of monolignols also involves the
transport and management of the glucosylated form and lower order oligomers of
monolignols.
Publications
Perkins, M.L., Schuetz, M., Unda, F., Chen, K.T., Bally, M.B., Kulkarni, J.A., Yan, Y., Pico, J., Castellarin, S.D., Mansfield, S.D., Samuels, A.L. (2022). Monolignol export by diffusion down a polymerization-induced concentration gradient. The Plant Cell. 34:2080–2095. [view abstract]
Perkins, M.L., Schuetz, M., Unda, F., Smith, R.A., Sibout, R., Hoffmann, N.J., Wong, D., Castellarin, S.D., Mansfield, S.D., Samuels, A.L. (2020). Dwarfism of high-monolignol Arabidopsis plants in rescued by ectopic LACCASE overexpression. Plant Direct. 4:e00265 [view abstract]
Perkins, M., Skori, L., Hickerson, N., Jamshed, M., Samuel, M. (2020) Genetic manipulation of ABI3 confers frost-tolerant seed degreening in canola. Plant Biotechnology Journal. 18:602-604 [view abstract]
Perkins, M., Smith, R.A., Samuels, A.L. (2019). The transport of monomers during lignification in plants: anything goes but how? Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 56:69-74. [view abstract]
Perkins, M. (2018) Macro Flower Photography: An Introduction to Photographic Principles and Techniques. In Y.-I. Lee and E. C.-T. Yeung, eds. Orchid Propagation: From Laboratories to Greenhouses---Methods and Protocols. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 463–476. [view abstract]
Munir T, Perkins M, Kaing M, Strack M. (2015). Carbon dioxide flux and net primary production of a boreal treed bog: responses to warming and water table manipulations. Biogeosciences. 12:1091-1111. [view abstract]
Perkins, M. (2018) Macro Flower Photography: An Introduction to Photographic Principles and Techniques. In Y.-I. Lee and E. C.-T. Yeung, eds. Orchid Propagation: From Laboratories to Greenhouses---Methods and Protocols. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 463–476. [view abstract]
Munir T, Perkins M, Kaing M, Strack M. (2015). Carbon dioxide flux and net primary production of a boreal treed bog: responses to warming and water table manipulations. Biogeosciences. 12:1091-1111. [view abstract]
Munir T, Xu B, Perkins M, Strack M. (2014). Responses of carbon dioxide flux and plant biomass to
drought in a treed peatland in northern Alberta: a climate change perspective. Biogeosciences.
11:807-820. [view abstract]
