Susan Lolle seeks to understand the fundamental genetic strategies plants use to aid their survival in changing environments. When running away isn’t an option, how do plants adapt to survive in a hostile environment? By gaining insight into these plant-specific survival strategies her research can help improve crop adaptation to climate change and aid global food security efforts. Molecular Genetics Plant Cell and Developmental Biology Genomics 1987 PhD McGill University 1981 BSc Honours Biology, Queen's University

Plant epidermal cells play important roles in reproduction, growth and normal development. We are interested in understanding how epidermal cell fate is determined and how the epidermal state is maintained. We have used a genetic approach to identify a collection of loci in Arabidopsis thaliana that affect epidermal function and specifically modulate contact-mediated adhesion events. Collectively, these studies have helped establish a direct connection between the biological properties of the cuticle, cell adhesion and reproduction. Our genetic analyses have also uncovered an unexpected connection between increased genetic variation and a locus involved in aspects of epidermal development. Plants harboring lesions at this locus show genome-wide variation that can manifest as genetically discordant somatic sectors in single plants. Although the mechanism by which this genetic variation arises is unknown, if verified, the existence of such a mechanism would represent a significant paradigm shift in the field of genome biology.

Espinosa, Katherine, Jessica Boelter, Susan Lolle, Marianne Hopkins, Susana Goggi, Reid Palmer, and Devinder Sandhu. (2015) Evaluation of spontaneous generation of allelic variation in soybean in response to sexual hybridization and stress. Canadian Journal of Plant Science 95(2):405-415. doi:10.4141/cjps-2014-324. Hopkins MT, Khalid, AM, Chang P-C, Vanderhoek, KC, Lai D, Doerr MD & Lolle SJ. (2013) De Novo Genetic Variation Revealed in Somatic Sectors of Single Arabidopsis Plants. [v2; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/1ii] F1000Research 2013, 2:5 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.2-5.v2) Lolle, S.J, J.L. Victor, J.M. Young and R.E. Pruitt (2005) Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis.Nature 434: 505-509.