I am looking to hire the first member of the Baxter lab, the technician who will run the ionomics facility. Here is the ad:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Plant Genetics Research Unit in St. Louis, Missouri is seeking applications for a permanent, full-time PHYSICAL SCIENCE TECHNICIAN, GS-07/08/09 to provide support with the operation of a high-throughput elemental profiling facility centered around inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometers. Salary is commensurate with experience (38,117 – 60,612 per year), plus benefits. US Citizenship is required. Candidates must request a copy of the vacancy announcement (ARS-X10W-0048) by either calling 301-504-1583 or by copying the full text announcement from the http://www.afm.ars.usda.gov/divisions/hrd/vacancy/VAC2.HTM website. Candidates must submit specific information as outlined in the vacancy announcement. Applications must be received by the closing date of January 11, 2010. The USDA-ARS is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
Please spread the word!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Ivan featured in Danforth center newsletter
A short feature on me in the Danforth newsletter (see page 3). Bonus action shot of me actually working in the lab!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Ferroportin Paper published in Plant Cell
Our paper describing the function of the two Ferroportin genes in Arabidopsis has just been published in the early access feed of Plant Cell!
The pdf is here (also available from our publications page)
here is the abstract......
Relatively little is known about how metals such as iron are effluxed from cells, a necessary step for transport from the root to the shoot. Ferroportin (FPN) is the sole iron efflux transporter identified to date in animals, and there are two closely related orthologs in Arabidopsis thaliana, IRON REGULATED1 (IREG1/FPN1) and IREG2/FPN2. FPN1 localizes to the plasma membrane and is expressed in the stele, suggesting a role in vascular loading; FPN2 localizes to the vacuole and is expressed in the two outermost layers of the root in response to iron deficiency, suggesting a role in buffering metal influx. Consistent with these roles, fpn2 has a diminished iron deficiency response, whereas fpn1 fpn2 has an elevated iron deficiency response. Ferroportins also play a role in cobalt homeostasis; a survey of Arabidopsis accessions for ionomic phenotypes showed that truncation of FPN2 results in elevated shoot cobalt levels and leads to increased sensitivity to the metal. Conversely, loss of FPN1 abolishes shoot cobalt accumulation, even in the cobalt accumulating mutant frd3. Consequently, in the fpn1 fpn2 double mutant, cobalt cannot move to the shoot via FPN1 and is not sequestered in the root vacuoles via FPN2; instead, cobalt likely accumulates in the root cytoplasm causing fpn1 fpn2 to be even more sensitive to cobalt than fpn2 mutants.
The pdf is here (also available from our publications page)
here is the abstract......
Relatively little is known about how metals such as iron are effluxed from cells, a necessary step for transport from the root to the shoot. Ferroportin (FPN) is the sole iron efflux transporter identified to date in animals, and there are two closely related orthologs in Arabidopsis thaliana, IRON REGULATED1 (IREG1/FPN1) and IREG2/FPN2. FPN1 localizes to the plasma membrane and is expressed in the stele, suggesting a role in vascular loading; FPN2 localizes to the vacuole and is expressed in the two outermost layers of the root in response to iron deficiency, suggesting a role in buffering metal influx. Consistent with these roles, fpn2 has a diminished iron deficiency response, whereas fpn1 fpn2 has an elevated iron deficiency response. Ferroportins also play a role in cobalt homeostasis; a survey of Arabidopsis accessions for ionomic phenotypes showed that truncation of FPN2 results in elevated shoot cobalt levels and leads to increased sensitivity to the metal. Conversely, loss of FPN1 abolishes shoot cobalt accumulation, even in the cobalt accumulating mutant frd3. Consequently, in the fpn1 fpn2 double mutant, cobalt cannot move to the shoot via FPN1 and is not sequestered in the root vacuoles via FPN2; instead, cobalt likely accumulates in the root cytoplasm causing fpn1 fpn2 to be even more sensitive to cobalt than fpn2 mutants.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Upcoming Talks
I will be giving 3 public talks in October:
1. Tuesday, October 20th, Plant Lunch Seminar.
Rm 212 McDonnell Hall, Washington University.
How Plants Alter their Elemental Composition to Adapt to Different Soil Environments
2. Integrating Web 2.0 Tools Into the Lab
A workshop as part of the IPMB meeting.
Wednesday, Oct 28th, 6pm. Location:TBD
3. As part of the Thursday, Oct. 29th morning IPMB session on Abiotic Stress I "water, salts, minerals", I will be giving a talk on combining association mapping with ionomics to identify genes important for stress tolerance.
1. Tuesday, October 20th, Plant Lunch Seminar.
Rm 212 McDonnell Hall, Washington University.
How Plants Alter their Elemental Composition to Adapt to Different Soil Environments
2. Integrating Web 2.0 Tools Into the Lab
A workshop as part of the IPMB meeting.
Wednesday, Oct 28th, 6pm. Location:TBD
3. As part of the Thursday, Oct. 29th morning IPMB session on Abiotic Stress I "water, salts, minerals", I will be giving a talk on combining association mapping with ionomics to identify genes important for stress tolerance.
Friday, October 2, 2009
FPT paper accepted
We just found out that our paper "The ferroportin metal efflux proteins function in iron and cobalt homeostasis" has been accepted in Plant Cell!
The full Author list is......
Joe Morrissey, Ivan R. Baxter, Joohyun Lee, Liangtao Li, Brett Lahner, Natasha Grotz, Jerry Kaplan, David E. Salt and Mary Lou Guerinota
The full Author list is......
Joe Morrissey, Ivan R. Baxter, Joohyun Lee, Liangtao Li, Brett Lahner, Natasha Grotz, Jerry Kaplan, David E. Salt and Mary Lou Guerinota
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Baxter lab looking for first non-Baxter member
I am looking to hire the first member of the Baxter lab, the technician who will run the ionomics facility. Here is the ad:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Plant Genetics Research Unit in St. Louis, Missouri is seeking applications for a permanent, full-time PHYSICAL SCIENCE TECHNICIAN, GS-07 to provide support with the operation of a high-throughput elemental profiling facility centered around inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometers. Salary is commensurate with experience (38,117 - 49,553 per year), plus benefits. US Citizenship is required. Candidates must request a copy of the vacancy announcement (ARS-X9W-0265) by either calling 301-504-1583 or by copying the full text announcement from the http://www.ars.usda.gov/Careers/Careers.htm website. Candidates must submit specific information as outlined in the vacancy announcement. Applications must be received by the closing date of September 24, 2009. The USDA/ARS is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Plant Genetics Research Unit in St. Louis, Missouri is seeking applications for a permanent, full-time PHYSICAL SCIENCE TECHNICIAN, GS-07 to provide support with the operation of a high-throughput elemental profiling facility centered around inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometers. Salary is commensurate with experience (38,117 - 49,553 per year), plus benefits. US Citizenship is required. Candidates must request a copy of the vacancy announcement (ARS-X9W-0265) by either calling 301-504-1583 or by copying the full text announcement from the http://www.ars.usda.gov/Careers/Careers.htm website. Candidates must submit specific information as outlined in the vacancy announcement. Applications must be received by the closing date of September 24, 2009. The USDA/ARS is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Grant Submitted to NSF-ABI
In collaboration with Olga Vitek, David Salt and Mourad Ouzzani at Purdue University, we just submitted a grant to the NSF Advances in Bioinformatics Infrastructure program. The title of the grant was "Connecting ionome and deletome: a computational and statistical approach".
In this grant, we propose to use the Yeast ionomics datasets as a model to:
1. Develop statistical methods to deal with large screens of high-dimensional phenotyping data.
2. Develop workflows to integrate multiple data types to generate knowledge using these datasets and other publicly available datasets.
3. Incorporate tools into Piims to facilitate these types of projects.
In this grant, we propose to use the Yeast ionomics datasets as a model to:
1. Develop statistical methods to deal with large screens of high-dimensional phenotyping data.
2. Develop workflows to integrate multiple data types to generate knowledge using these datasets and other publicly available datasets.
3. Incorporate tools into Piims to facilitate these types of projects.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
New Review
Dr. Baxter just published a review on ionomics in Current Opinions in Plant Biology titled "Ionomics: Studying the Social Network of Mineral Nutrients". Contact Dr. Baxter for a PDF.
You can find a full list of Dr. Baxters papers here.
You can find a full list of Dr. Baxters papers here.
New paper on an ionomics mutant
Renovations begin soon
We are in the middle of reviewing the designs for the lab renovations of the space that will house our prep lab and the instrument room.
The prep lab will have two digestion hoods and a weighing robot that will allow us to get the individual kernel/bean weights for the thousands of corn and soybean samples that we will be running. When we analyze arabidopsis, we can calculate the weights for the samples better than we can actually measure them with a 5 place balance (you can read about the weight calculation and see a powerpoint presentation of how it works here). Due to the much higher starch, oil or protein content of agricultural seeds, the proportion of the seed containing most of the elements is a much small proportion of the total seed. This would throw off the weight calculation so we are going to actually weigh each seed individually. Hence the need for the robot.
The Instrument lab will have two Perkin Elmer inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometers: An Optima 7300DV optical emission spectrometer (OES) and an Elan DRC-e.
The prep lab will have two digestion hoods and a weighing robot that will allow us to get the individual kernel/bean weights for the thousands of corn and soybean samples that we will be running. When we analyze arabidopsis, we can calculate the weights for the samples better than we can actually measure them with a 5 place balance (you can read about the weight calculation and see a powerpoint presentation of how it works here). Due to the much higher starch, oil or protein content of agricultural seeds, the proportion of the seed containing most of the elements is a much small proportion of the total seed. This would throw off the weight calculation so we are going to actually weigh each seed individually. Hence the need for the robot.
The Instrument lab will have two Perkin Elmer inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometers: An Optima 7300DV optical emission spectrometer (OES) and an Elan DRC-e.
The Baxter Lab is live!
The Baxter lab is open for business. We are part of the USDA-ARS Plant Genetics Research Unit (HQ is Columbia, MO) but we are housed at the Donald Danforth Plant Sciences Center in St. Louis, MO. Here is our Danforth website.
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