Virginia Walbot

Administrative Appointments

• Elected to the Steering Committee of the Faculty Senate, Stanford (2009 - 2011)
• Elected to Faculty Senate, Stanford (2009 - 2011)
• Elected to Faculty Senate, Stanford (1999 - 2001)
• Committee on Committees, Stanford (2000 - 2001)
• Committee on Research, Stanford (2003 - 2005)

Honors and Awards

• Cooresponding Member, Mexican Academy of Sciences (2004)
• Hageman Lectureship, Kansas State University (2001)
• Joan V. Wood Lectureship, Indiana University (1999)
• Explorer Award, National Geographic Society (1998)
• Eppley Award, Eppley Foundation (1993)

Professional Education

Postdoctoral Advisees

David Skibbe , Dongxue Wang

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

• Cancer Biology
• Plantbiology

Community & International Work

• UV-B Irradiation, Stanford 
• Corn cancer caused by Ustilago maydis, Stanford CA 
• Cell Fate Acquisition, Cal Poly and Stanford 
• DNA Methylation Society 

Web Site Links

• http://www.stanford.edu/%7Ewalbot Stanford Laboratory

Research Interests

Research Interests

My central interest is the mechanisms that create allelic diversity and modulate genome stability in plants. The key features of plant development are that the body plan is indefinite, with continual stem cell activity producing new organs, and that there is an alternation of generations in which the phenotypes of haploid cells are determined mainly by their genotype. These life cycle features allow somatic and gametic selection to operate more stringently than in complex animals with a fixed body plan and in animal gametes. Our primary focus has been the regulation of MuDR/Mu transposable elements in the context of the maize life cycle. Our most recent projects involve analysis of a mutants in cell fate specification in maize anthers. The anther locules have just 5 cell types, including the cells that ultimately undergo meiosis. Using a panel of male sterile mutants, transcriptome profiling, proteomics, and genetic analysis we are defining how these cells acquire their fates, and then maintain them. As different cell types support different Mu transposon activities, we expect to uncover the host regulation of the transposons through this study. We are particularly interested in late signaling events within the anther to specify cell fate and have both mutants and novel candidate protein signal molecules to test.

MuDR/Mu elements exhibit two forms of developmental regulation: very late activation and a difference in transpositional outcome in somatic and pre-germinal cells. Mu elements are active only during terminal cell divisions of tissue development, a feature that is post-transcriptionally regulated, because the MURA transposase and MURB helper proteins encoded by MuDR are ubiquitously present. In the soma, activation results in element excision (“cut & paste” or "cut only" transposition), however, in pre-meiotic cells and in gametes, activation results in insertion without element excision (replicative...

Publications

• Nonradioactive genomic DNA blots for detection of low abundant sequences in transgenic maize. Nan GL, Walbot V. Methods Mol Biol. 2009: 526 113-22
• Plasmid rescue: recovery of flanking genomic sequences from transgenic transposon insertion sites. Nan GL, Walbot V. Methods Mol Biol. 2009: 526 101-9
• Are we training pit bulls to review our manuscripts? Walbot V, J Biol. 2009; 8 (3): 24
• Mutator transposon activity reprograms the transcriptomes and proteomes of developing maize anthers. Skibbe DS, Fernandes JF, Medzihradszky KF, Burlingame AL, Walbot V. Plant J. 2009; 59 (4): 622-33
• Maize genome in motion. Walbot V, Genome Biol. 2008; 9 (4): 303