REU-searching floral carotenoids in Solanaceae
Carotenoids are the pigments that make oranges orange and tomatoes red. Despite their abundance in fruits, we know very little about their role in flower color. Exciting recent work in Mimulus has identified some of the genes that control the yellow nectar guides that are made with carotenoids, and Ashley, an undergraduate from TAMU-Corpus Christi, is looking to see if those same genes are found in the tomato family. She is using anatomical approaches to score levels of carotenoid production in flowers (because you can see them in chromoplasts!) as well as transcriptomic approaches to search for candidate genes. All the beautiful images below are hers! She will soon be presenting preliminary results from her work at Botany 2019 in Tucson.