With partial funding, this project could achieve: 1) Identification of promoter regions in the genes of interest; 2) Construction of CRISPR vectors used for tomato transformation; 3) Tomato transformation to generate promoter-edited tomato lines; 4) Bacterial infection testing with tomato mutants; 5) Collection of growth and resistance data for wildtype and mutant plants. This support will generate essential preliminary data for high-impact external grant applications and accelerate our lab’s contribution to JMU’s mission of fostering research-driven student learning.
Project Team
Faculty: Dr. Ning Zhang, Assistant Professor, Biology, College of Science and Mathematics. Dr. Zhang has extensive experience in plant genome editing. She has utilized CRISPR/Cas9 technology to study tomato speck disease and has generated hundreds of tomato mutant lines, disrupting more than 150 immunity-associated genes in tomato.
Master’s student: I have a prospective master student for 2026 Fall. This project will serve as the primary research focus for the Master’s student.
Undergraduate students: Maya Burns, Will Royer, Noora Seidou, Gabrielle King, Nathan Koon and Kira Kang are currently working with Dr. Zhang on generating and characterizing tomato CRISPR knockout mutants to study resistance against the bacterial pathogens Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato.
Supplemental Materials •
Zhang lab website: https://zhang6nx.wixsite.com/plantbiotech • References • Savary, S., Willocquet, L., Pethybridge, S.J., Esker, P., McRoberts, N., and Nelson, A., (2019) The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 430-439. • Zhang, N., McHale, L.M., Finer, J.J., (2019). Changes to the core and flanking sequences of G-box elements lead to increases and decreases in gene expression in both native and synthetic soybean promoters. Plant Biotechnology Journal 17(4):724-735. • Zhang, N., Roberts, H.M., Van Eck, J. and Martin, G.B., (2020). Generation and molecular characterization of CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutations in 63 immunity-associated genes in tomato reveals specificity and a range of gene modifications. Frontiers in plant science , 11 , p.10.
Madison Trust 2026 Project Proposal
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