Samantha Snodgrass, P3 graduate student, is being awarded a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from National Science Foundation (NSF GRFP). The NSF GRFP is awarded annually to recognize and support outstanding graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in STEM-related disciplines.

The title of her research is: "Exploring Hybrid Maize in the Genomics Era: single parent expression, complementation, and heterosis"

Here's a summary of her graduate research project:

Hybrid maize is used in agriculture for its superior performance compared to inbred parents, a phenomenon called hybrid vigor. While there are several classical models describing the genetic processes resulting in hybrid vigor, none of the models have been completely supported by experiments. This project uses genomes for 13 separate maize inbred lines, sampling a wide range of maize diversity, to scan for specific expression differences between F1 hybrids and their parents such as single parent expression (a gene is expressed in one parent and the hybrid, but not in the other parent). I and my team will further identify the underlying cause for these expression patterns and how they may relate to plant fitness.