Neurogenetics of resistance to seizure-inducing plant toxins
Noah Whiteman, Professor
Integrative Biology
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
Approximately fifty percent of all insect species are herbivorous and together with plants, comprise over half of all named species of life. To feed on a plant, an herbivore must evolve strategies to overcome the chemical defenses (toxins) that plants produce to protect themselves from herbivory. These toxins may inhibit digestion and lead to starvation, disrupt DNA transcription and replication, or destroy essential proteins. Most plant toxins, however, probably exert their toxic effects by attacking the animal nervous system. For example, milkweed heart toxins paralyze naive consumers. Veratrum steroidal alkaloids (VSAs) are a class of plant neurotoxins that have been poorly studied yet cause potent seizures by attacking a fundamental neural protein that generates electrical signals in animals: the voltage-gated sodium channel. This project aims to understand how insect herbivores have evolved to protect their voltage-gated sodium channels to prevent seizure. Students will combine computational methods (genome analysis and molecular docking) with behavioral experiments (toxin-feeding in flies) to understand how natural variation in neural proteins mediate resistance to VSAs in nature.
Role: To be decided.
Qualifications: No previous experience required.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Diler Haji, Ph.D. candidate
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Related website: http://www.noahwhiteman.org/
Biological & Health Sciences