Deluc Plant Genomic and
Genetic Engineering Lab
Mahmut Mesut Diker: Mahmut Mesut is a PhD student in plant breeding and genetics program in horticulture department. I am from Bursa locating in the northwest part of Turkey. He has completed my Bachelors and MSc degree at Suleyman Demirel University. His interests are related to genetics of grapevines and new breeding techniques. His work in the lab are focused on two research areas,. In the first one, he wants to understand the influence of the seed-derived auxin during the ripening initiating on the development of the pericarp tissues. To address this question, he is currently generating two series of transgenic lines. The first series is n3GFP and ntdTomato gene under the control of an auxin inducible promoter to characterize the auxin signaling at the gene expression level (Liao et al., 2015). The second series of transgenic lines express the ntdTomato- and Venus-Aux/IAA degradation Domain II fusion proteins under a constitutive expression and is meant to evaluate the auxin response through the degradation of the fusion proteins (Liao et al., 2015). On the second research project, he is interested in developing a CRISPR/Cas9 interference and activation pipeline at OSU to study a small class of epigenetic regulator genes (Jumomji-related demethylase). He is currently preparing different gateway vectors under under our current conditional expression system in order to understand the importance of demethylases during several transitional phases of grapevine development (fruit, shoot, and roots) and in response to environmental stresses.
Our group conducts functional genomics and plant physiology studies on fruit and cereal crops. We study different aspects of plant biology either as part of a developmental program or in response to stress conditions. Our final objective is to translate this knowledge for crop production improvement. Using fundamentals of plant physiology, genetic, bioinformatics, molecular and systems biology we specifically study basic plant processes associated with plant hormone signaling, plant pathogen interactions, long-distance signaling communications in perennial and annual crops. Our plant models for research are grapevine (field and controlled environment) as fruit crop and Brachypodium distachyon (stiff brome) for cereal crops.
Students and researchers at any level in their educational path and career (Post-Doctoral, PhD, MSc, BSc) with lab experience or seeking training in plant molecular biology, genetics or bioinformatics may contact us to discuss possible projects and mentorships. The Deluc Lab accepts motivated undergraduate and graduate students eager to learn plant sciences, genomics and genetic engineering.