The Shahid Siddique lab swept the spotlight at the Society of Nematologists' meeting in Baltimore. From left are graduate student Alison Snyder; doctoral student Ching-Jung Li; doctoral candidate Pallavi Shakya; UC Davis Professor Emerita Valerie Williamson, recipient of the Honorary Member award; Professor Shahid Siddique, Excellence in Teaching Award; doctoral candidate Alison Blundell, and postdoctoral researcher Dadong Dai.
Siddique Lab Shines at the Society of Nematologists' Conference
Doctoral Candidates and Post-Doctoral Researcher Present Work
by Kathy Keatley Garvey
UC Davis Professor Shahid Siddique received the Excellence in Teaching award, and UC Professor Emerita Valerie Williamson, the Honorary Member award, at the recent meeting of the Society of Nematologists (SON). The Honorary Member award is SON's highest honor.
The lab of UC Davis nematologist Shahid Siddique was well represented at the international Society of Nematologists' recent meeting in Baltimore.
Not only did Professor Siddique receive the Excellence in Teaching Award (see news story) and UC Davis Professor Emerita Valerie Williamson, Department of Plant Pathology, the top honor of Honorary Member (see news story) but the Siddique lab members shined in the spotlight.
Doctoral candidate Pallavi Shakya presented an invited lecture, while doctoral candidate Alison Blundell, doctoral student Ching-Jung Lin, and postdoctoral researcher Dadong Dai delivered research presentations. Lin and Blundell also organized a graduate student workshop.
Alison Snyder, new graduate student in the lab of Professor Shahid Siddique, with her research poster on root-knot nematodes that she presented at the Society of Nematologists' meeting in Baltimore.
Shakya discussed "The High-Resolution Genome Assembly and Linkage Mapping in Meloidogyne Hapla Reveal Non-Canonical Telomere Repeats and Recombination Hotspots Associate with Effector Proteins."
Blundell presented "Field to Lab: Characterizing Fitness Costs in Resistance-Breaking Nematode Populations."
Lin discussed "Elucidating the Role of Migpsy Peptides in Plant-Root-Knot Nematode (RKN) Interaction."
Dai delivered a presentation on "Genomic Chaos Enables Global Success in a Clonal Plant Pathogen."
Also participating was Alison Snyder, a new graduate student in the Siddique lab. who presented a research poster titled "How Root-Knot Nematodes Meet Their Nutritional Needs Across Diverse Plants."
Research in the Siddique lab focuses on basic as well as applied aspects of interaction between parasitic nematodes and their host plants, as related on the professor's website. "The long-term object of our research is not only to enhance our understanding of molecular aspects of plant–nematode interaction but also to use this knowledge to provide new resources for reducing the impact of nematodes on crop plants in California," Siddique says.
