Brendan S. Kelley
2005 - 2006 CSIP Fellow

Research Interest:
Plant Pathology

How do plants get sick? Why are microbes the most successful organisms on the planet? What do a plant pathogen and a sea slug have in common? How can computational predictions support biological data and inform new experiments? These are important questions in biology that can be readily addressed in the classroom and I look forward to giving students ownership of such inquiries. As a CSIP fellow, I will draw on my experience in museum-based traveling science to engage students in “hands on” and “minds on” learning that emphasizes the reasoning behind scientific experimentation.

I am eager to extend my lab’s research infrastructure into secondary classrooms for experiments such as DNA separation by electrophoresis, isolation of visible genomic DNA, microbial digestion of various commercially available foods, and use of computers to investigate publicly available gene and protein databases.
In my graduate research, I am using a genome-scale approach to screen for proteins that are secreted from both the plant and pathogen during tomato late blight disease development. Revealing the function of these unknown secreted proteins will improve our understanding of how plants and their pathogens interact and what factors lead to disease or host resistance. Other interests include gene evolution, ethnobotany, and forest canopy ecology.