[CEPCEB_All] Fwd: Plants3D July 2021 newsletter

[Maureen Gateas]

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*The Plants3D NRT Program Newsletter*
July 2021
*Announcements*

   - Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science workshop "the essentials
   online": Friday 17 September 2021 from 10 am - 1:00 pm
   - Community Member Highlight: Dr. Robert Jinkerson and Ph.D. candidate
   Marcus Harland-Dunaway.

*Friday, September 17th, from 10 am - 1:00 pm.*
"Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science workshop - The Essentials."

As scientists, we are used to communicating science among our peers and
other scientists. Most of us do an amazing job. But, have you ever
struggled to communicate your work to an undergrad or someone who is not a
scientist, such as your grandparents, friends from high school, or maybe
just a random person you met on a long flight?

Let's be honest, we use a lot of jargon and technical details when we try
to communicate our work. However, most people are unfamiliar with these
terms, and their eyes glaze over.

The Plants3D program is excited that our Plants3D trainees will get the
opportunity to learn how to properly communicate science during the Alan
Alda Center for Communicating Science workshop "the essentials online" on
Friday, September 17th, from 10 am - 1:00 pm.

Please note that this workshop is limited to 16 trainees and that first
come, first served counts when registering for this workshop. For more
information about the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, please
visit https://aldacenter.org/index.php
<https://ucr.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=20258b97443c8dea22c17955f&id=95a55c4b74&e=f8eca9c9de>.
Contact Maureen if you have not expressed your interest.

Plants3D Community Profile

*Dr. Robert Jinkerson and Ph.D. candidate Marcus Harland-Dunaway*

Professor Jinkerson’s research program is broadly interested in
photosynthetic organisms - plants and algae. These organisms have huge
agricultural, economic, and environmental importance. His research aims to
make fundamental discoveries about the biology of these organisms and then
use this knowledge to engineer solutions to problems in the fields of food,
energy, and the environment.

Dr. Jinkerson’s unique academic background draws on graduate and
postdoctoral training in biological engineering at the University of
Missouri, applied chemistry at Colorado School of Mines, and plant biology
at the Carnegie Institution/Stanford. Currently, he is an assistant
professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and a
cooperating faculty in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences.

A main goal of Jinkerson's lab is to engineer plants for controlled
environment agriculture – for example, farming in urban areas, vertical
structures, shipping containers, or even spacecrafts. To thrive in these
non-traditional environments, plants must overcome challenges such as
limited physical space, artificial lighting, and unique growth substrates.
The lab applies the latest advances in genome engineering and synthetic
biology to engineer plants for these environments.

Urban agriculture offers many benefits for food production, including land
use efficiency, resource use efficiencies, lower environmental impacts,
shorter supply chains, and production independent of the weather, pests, or
seasons; however, it often has higher costs relative to traditional farming
and is limited to only a few crops.

*SPACE Tomatoes*
Recently, in collaboration with Dr. Martha Orozco, Director of the UCR
Plant Transformation Facility, the lab has studied an extremely dwarf
tomato created using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, now called the SPACE (Small
Plants for Agriculture Controlled Environments) tomato. The SPACE tomato
shows promise for providing fresh vegetables during long-term space travel
and in urban areas grown in vertical structures. As a result of progress in
this area, Dr. Jinkerson was awarded the FFAR New Innovator Award
<https://ucr.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=20258b97443c8dea22c17955f&id=926407433d&e=f8eca9c9de>
to help support him and his lab to engineer larger, tastier varieties of
tomatoes to be better suited for controlled environment agriculture and
begin engineering other crops such as peppers, potatoes, and lettuce for
growth in similarly challenging environments.

This work has also been awarded a NASA Space Biology grant to evaluate the
SPACE tomatoes for growth in NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) on the
International Space Station (ISS). This experiment aims to determine how
well the tomatoes grow in microgravity and perform a “seed to seed”
experiment in which astronauts will harvest seeds from the tomatoes and
grow a new generation of SPACE tomatoes on the ISS to complete the plant
life cycle.

*Plants3D fellow Marcus Harland-Dunaway’s perspective on working in a
Chemical and Environmental Engineering lab and how Plants3D is connected to
his Ph.D. research.*

I was always interested in application-driven research, and that is
certainly a focus in our lab. Dr. Jinkerson has a lot of experience in
biological systems and chemical engineering, so I feel like I have received
plenty of guidance on thinking about biological research and experimental
methods. Still, I have also gained a lot of new perspectives. *I have
definitely built up an engineering mindset while working in the lab.* I
always think about the simplest, most efficient means to answer a question
or design an experiment. The focus always comes back to how the approach
moves us towards an application or gives us the most information for the
effort that I put into it. I have also received a lot of exposure to
interdisciplinary ideas and technologies; for example, we collaborated with
a chemical engineering lab at the University of Delaware with an
electrolysis system that could efficiently produce acetate. We worked with
them to incorporate this system with biology and produce an artificial
photosynthetic system for food production, which we are currently working
on publishing. This collaboration has led to current lines of research for
me in the lab, which has even overlapped with the Plants3D program.

As I said, I am interested in application-driven research, so the Plants3D
program was perfect for getting more experience thinking about research in
the context of an overarching application that is scalable and profitable.
It also introduced some engineering concepts that help quantify the
feasibility of research ideas and whether they could be a worthwhile
business venture. I was able to take the acetate project I was working on
in the lab with plants and reapply it in the Plants3D course to yeast. With
the help of two engineering PhDs students in Plants3D with experience
working with yeast (*Sarah Thorwall *and *Nick Robertson*), we developed a
feasible project. We were awarded seed funding for early exploration
through the *Plants3D 2020 Design Tournament*. Overall, the program
perfectly fits my goals and interests, taught me how to think about
research for business applications, and helped me make new connections and
collaborations at UCR. I would recommend it to anyone, even if they were
not thinking about pursuing a career in biotech or industry.

On the left, Dr. Robert Jinkerson and the right Marcus Harland-Dunaway.
*Trainee Information and Tips*

Do you want your research or outreach to be featured on our website or in a
newsletter? Do you want changes in your bio? Do you have an idea for the
community to share? Do you want to feature your PI or a new paper?

Please email the Plants3D NRT Program Coordinator, Maureen Hummel, about
your accomplishments with "Plants3D product" as your subject.

Be sure to acknowledge your NSF funding on every abstract, poster, and
manuscript as follows:
"Funded by the US National Science Foundation, DBI-1922642".

*Program Contacts*
Julia Bailey-Serres,
University Distinguished Professor,
Botany and Plant Sciences
serres at ucr.edu
*
Ian Wheeldon,
Professor,
Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Ian.wheeldon at ucr.edu
*
Maureen Hummel,
Program Coordinator
maureenh at ucr.edu
Plants3D NRT Website
<https://ucr.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=20258b97443c8dea22c17955f&id=f818db62d2&e=f8eca9c9de>
*Copyright © 2021 Plants3D NSF NRT *DBI-1922642*, All rights reserved.*
plants3d.ucr.edu
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