I completed my BSc in Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology here at UBC in 2013. During my degree, I took a variety of
plant courses ranging from “Evolutionary Processes in Plants” to “Forest
Genetics.” However, my interest in plant molecular biology was only realized
after taking Shawn Mansfield’s Plant Physiology course in my third year. In the
summer of 2012, I was given the opportunity to work as an undergraduate
research assistant in Shawn’s lab at UBC Forestry where I worked on many
different projects related to wood chemistry and molecular biology.
That summer, I assisted with the
development of a micro-Klason method, which would require less time and
material than the established Klason method for determining wood lignin
content. I continued working in the lab in the fall right through until I
graduated. In the summer of 2013 I received an NSERC undergraduate researchaward which allowed me to continue working in Shawn’s lab where I assisted with
the analysis of a large subset of poplar leaves from the POPCAN collection (a
large-scale applied research project looking at the genetic improvement of
poplar trees as a Canadian bioenergy feedstock) with the aim of determining
cuticular wax composition. Overall, whilst working as a research assistant, a
lot of my time was spent caring for, phenotyping, genotyping, and harvesting
transgenic poplar and Arabidopsis thaliana plants from a variety of different
projects that were going on in the lab.
In January 2014, I started my Master’s
degree as a student in the Working on Walls NSERC CREATE program, co-supervised
by Shawn and Lacey. My research interest is lignin; specifically I am aiming to
better understand the plasticity that exists in the polymerization of lignin
monomers to form the lignin polymer.
Lignin is a complex cell wall biopolymer
essential for normal plant development and survival because it imparts strength
and rigidity to the cell wall which are necessary for plant growth and defense.
In the pulp and paper industry, lignin must be chemically separated from the
wood carbohydrates, requiring large amounts of energy and harsh, expensive
chemicals. For similar reasons, lignin is also an obstacle to the production of
biofuels from lignocellulosic materials, where it hinders the enzymatic
digestion of cell wall carbohydrates. Though the lignin polymer is made up
mainly of the three “traditional” lignin subunits, it has become clear that
lignin incorporates a greater variety of monomers. Some monomer are acylated
with one of a variety of acids, forming monolignol conjugates which then
polymerize into the lignin backbone. The formation of pre-acylated monolignols
infers the action of monolignol transferase enzymes, some of which have been
discovered, while others have eluded us. My Master’s project aims to identify
the gene encoding for the p-hydroxybenzoyl-CoA monolignol transferase (pHBMT)
from poplar through in-depth analysis RNA sequencing data, misregulating the
candidate in poplar and A. thaliana, and then analyzing the resulting wood
chemistry.
