Position Title
Professor Emerita
- Plant Biology
Research Interests
Genetics of DNA repair and mutagenesis in the higher plant Arabidopsis. How plants repair and/or tolerate DNA damage generated by chemicals, UV light, and gamma radiation. Processes of genetic recombination, in meiotic and mitotic cells. Transcriptional regulation of damage response. Role of programmed cell death in plant recovery from double strand breaks. Gene editing and CRSIPR technologies. Acceleration of plant breeding through formation of doubled haploids.
We are interested in strategies by which different cell types, with different roles in the development in a complex organism, vary in their responses to DNA damage. We study both immediate responses to damage (the decision to arrest the cell cycle, die, or simply repair the damage) and the longer-term developmental consequences of these decisions.
Much of modern plant breeding depends on the production of inbred, true-breeding lines that are then crossed to produce elite hybrids. Production of doubled haploids (plants derived from a single parental gamete) allows breeders to produce true-breeding lines in a single generation. Using a approach involving the modification of centromeres, originally discovered by Simon Chan and Ravi Maruthachalam, we are developing technogies for the induction of doubled haploids in a wide variety of crops.
Graduate Program Affiliations
- 1981 B.S. in Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 1986 Ph.D. in Biochemistry, University of California, Berkeley
- "Kuppu S, Ron M, Marimuthu MPA, Li G, Huddleson A, Siddeek MH, Terry J, Buchner R, Shabek N, Comai L, Britt AB.. A variety of changes, including CRISPR/Cas9-mediated deletions, in CENH3 lead to haploid induction on outcrossing. Plant Biotechnology J., 2020
- "SOG1 links DNA damage response to organ regeneration" Johnson, RA, Phillip Conklin, PA, Tjahjadi, M, Missirian, V., Toal, T, Brady, SM, Britt, AB, Plant Physiology doi/10.1104/pp.17.01274 176:1665 (2018)
- “Point mutations in centromeric histone induce post-zygotic incompatibility and uniparental inheritance” Sundaram Kuppu, Ek Han Tan, Hanh Nguyen, Andrea Rodgers, Luca Comai, Simon W. L. Chan, and Anne B. Britt Plos Genetics DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005494 (2015)
- “A haploid genetics toolbox for Arabidopsis thaliana" Maruthachalam, R., Marimuthu, M., Tan, E., Shamoni Maheshwari, S. Henry, I., Marin-Rodriguez, B., Urtecho, G., Tan, I., Thornhill, K., Zhu, F., Panoli, A., Sundaresan, V., Britt, A., Comai, L. and Chan, S. Nature Comm. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6334 (2014)
- “High atomic weight, high-energy radiation (HZE) induces transcriptional responses shared with conventional stresses in addition to a core “DSB” response specific to clastogenic treatments” Missirian, V., Conklin, P., Culligan, K., Huefner, N., and Britt, A. Frontiers in Plant Science doi: 10.3389/fpls.2014.00364 (2014)