Achievement

An IGERT student Matthew Schultz is utilizing next generation sequencing data to help elucidate the extent and effect of epigenetic variation in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which led to publication of a Science paper. Matthew is involved in a project to survey the epigenomes of 200 naturally-occurring strains of Arabidopsis. Examination of this phenomenon has required the development of analysis pipelines to map and associate epigenotypes with genomic and phenotypic features. Through better understanding these epialleles, it might one day be possible to use them to affect the phenotypes of plants without an alteration of their genotype. Throughout this research, Matthew has learned a great deal about how to develop tools for effectively using next generation sequencing data to answer fundamental questions in biology. This research was made possible through the IGERT Program.