Our research improves lives, prepares students

We conduct high-quality research, and we offer extensive student research opportunities to prepare students for a variety of careers.

Generating first-ever transgenic ticks to fight Lyme disease

Ticks are known for transmitting many diseases in animals and humans, especially the deer tick, which is a known carrier of diseases such as Lyme disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Monika Gulia-Nuss is working on generating transgenic ticks in her lab, the first of their kind, in order to explore new strategies to limit the spread of the disease pathogens they carry. Transgenic in this sense means deleting or over-expressing a gene in an organism - in this case the tick. Generating transgenic ticks will not only help the Gulia-Nuss lab to explore new ways of controlling the diseases ticks spread, but also help in understanding the genes involved in tick-pathogen interactions.

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John Cushman with research team in greenhouse

Improving the water-use efficiency of plants

Some of the most water-efficient plants do an unexpected thing at night. They take up carbon dioxide at night instead of during the warmer daytime, which improves efficiency of water use and adaption to semi-arid and arid climates. John Cushman is one of the world's leading researchers on the molecular genetics of this specialized type of photosynthesis, which is known as crassulacean acid metabolism or CAM photosynthesis. His research and plant molecular-genetics program are nationally and internationally recognized, and have made important contributions to understanding and developing more water-efficient plants.

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A lab’s unique look at the structure of plants and how they can help us

You would think that as important as cell walls are to our daily life, we would understand everything about them, and in reality, we are only beginning to understand how plants decide to make a cell wall in the first place. But what is less clear is how plants decide to make more or less cell wall material under changing environmental or developmental conditions. The plant cell wall governs everything from how big a plant cell can get to what shape it will eventually acquire. These polymers are not only important for plant growth, but humans have an intimate relationship with plant cell wall material as well. It is in what one wears, and even a desk where one sits. It is also used as fuel, and fed to forage animals.

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Research lab studies genetics of potatoes to prevent losses while in storage

When most people think of potatoes, the word research does not usually follow. But with their Mr. Potato head mascot watching over the lab, our plant biology tag team, Dylan Kosma and Patricia Santos, are searching for ways to reduce potato crop losses during storage. The research delves into comprehending how different potato varieties can have different storage lives. They are using one variety that stores very well and another that stores very poorly to understand the molecular basis of this differential storage capacity. From a basic science perspective, no one has yet figured this out.

The Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology focus is to provide strong educational programs for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, to conduct high quality research in biochemistry, molecular biology and biotechnology, and to effectively transmit scientific knowledge to the general public.

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Which wine grape varieties are most efficient?

Grape production is one of the most important agricultural commodities in the U.S. and is threatened by climate change. This is particularly relevant in a semi-arid state such as Nevada with a rapidly growing population competing for scarce water resources. Abscisic acid, a plant stress hormone, regulates water use efficiency and drought resistance in plants. Grant Cramer is researching which wine grape cultivars are most water-use efficient and seeks to select genotypes varying in abscisic acid production that can be used to improve water-use efficiency and drought resistance.

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