The goal of my research program is the elucidation of double fertilization mechanisms in flowering plants using tobacco and Plumbago as model systems, with the goal of resolving how gametes develop, recognize one another, fuse and transmit their nuclear and cytoplasmic genome. Recent work has emphasized the isolation of male and female gametes, and increasingly using molecular tools, with the goal of exploiting the unique attributes of gametes to develop a genetically powerful haploid method for selecting flowering plant characteristics for purposes of transformation and recombination.
