Randall Kerstetter Assistant Professor Rutgers University Plant Biology & Pathology Waksman Institute Piscataway. NJ 08854-0759 (732) 445-4737 FAX - 5735 randallk@waksman.rutgers.edu

Molecular genetics of leaf development. dorsal-ventral polarity in Arabidopsis. tools for manipulating plant gene expression

Genetic and molecular regulation of leaf morphogenesis and development. A tremendous diversity of leaf form and function is found in nature. My research interests center on elucidating the genetic and developmental basis for variation in leaf form and uncovering the underlying mechanisms that guide leaf morphogenesis. Current research projects address the genetic mechanisms by which sidedness (otherwise known as dorsal-ventral or adaxial-abaxial polarity) is established and maintained during leaf development. These studies take advantage of the wealth of genetic and bioinformatics tools that are available in Arabidopsis thaliana. the model system for plant genomics.

Tools for visualizing and manipulating gene expression in plants. A complementary approach to identify determinants of adaxial-abaxial polarity in Arabidopsis takes advantage of a set of transgenic lines that express the yeast transcriptional activator GAL4-VP16 in tissue- or cell-specific patterns. We are generating vectors and transgenic Arabidopsis plants that will facilitate the use of this system for manipulating gene expression. mosaic analysis. genetic ablation studies. and tissue-specific activation tagging mutagenesis. My lab is currently using "GAL4 Activation Tagging" to identifying genes involved in leaf morphogenesis by characterizing mutants caused by the misexpression of genes under the control of GAL4-VP16 expressed in abaxial leaf tissue.

Selected Publications

Kerstetter. R.A. . Bollman. K.. Taylor. R.A.. Bomblies. K.. and Poethig. R.S. (2001) KANADI regulates organ polarity in Arabidopsis. Nature (London) 411: 706-709.

Kerstetter. R.A. and Poethig. R.S. (1998) The specification of leaf identity during shoot development. Annual Reviews in Cell and Developmental Biology 14: 373-398.

Kerstetter. R.A.. Laudencia-Chingcuanco. D.. . and Hake. S. (1997) Loss-of-function mutations in the maize homeobox gene. knotted1. are defective in shoot meristem maintenance. Development 124: 3045-3054.

Kerstetter. R.A. and Hake. S. (1997) Shoot meristem formation in vegetative development. The Plant Cell 9: 1001-1010.

Kerstetter. R.. Vollbrecht. E.. Lowe. B.. Veit. B.. Yamaguchi. J.. and Hake. S. (1994) Sequence analysis and expression patterns divide the maize knotted1-like homeobox genes into two classes. The Plant Cell 6: 1877-1887.