Jeff Long, Ph.D.
- Professor and Chair, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology
Research Areas
Jeff Long, Ph.D., is a developmental biologist who investigates the role gene regulating proteins play in the formation and function of plant stem cells. He seeks to understand how plants can maintain stem cell pools throughout their lifetime and how these stem cells respond to signals coming from the differentiated organs that they produce.
By employing a combination of genetic, genomic, biochemical and imaging techniques, Long has discovered key regulators of plant stem cell fate and found that many molecules in plants resemble those found in animal stem cell populations.
He primarily uses the flowering mustard plant Arabidopsis as a model organism due to its fully sequenced and annotated genome, short life cycle and publicly available insertion alleles for almost every gene. He ultimately seeks to understand the transcriptional mechanisms that allow this and other plants to pattern both its body plan and specific tissue types throughout development. As similar processes occur in human and animal development, these studies may identify basic mechanisms relevant to human health and disease.
Research Projects
- Identifying key factors in plant stem cell formation and maintenance
- Identifying genes responsible for embryonic polarity in plants
- Understanding how important protein groups like the polycomb repressive complex 2 function in plant stem cells Cells that have the ability to differentiate into multiple types of cells and make an unlimited number of copies of themselves. stem cells Cells that have the ability to differentiate into multiple types of cells and make an unlimited number of copies of themselves.
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Fellowship
- Genetics and Molecular Biology, California Institute of Technology, 2003
Degree
- Ph.D., Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999