Miss Irene Van Nugteren

MSc Student

Research Interests

I am an MSc student under the supervision of Dave Berger in the microarray lab. My MSc project is aimed at developing a virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) system to be used in the hardy crop plant, pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum). Such a functional genomic tool could be used to investigate the role of specific genes in defence against the biotrophic pathogen of millet Puccinia substriata var. indica. My study will also aim to characterize the infection process of Puccinia in resistant and susceptible interactions with millet by histological and molecular analysis.