Wrentham Native Michele Flannery Earns Summer Research Award

EASTON, MA (04/09/2012)(readMedia)-- Wrentham native Michele Flannery will be one of 50 students from Stonehill College working with faculty members at the College this summer on research projects through the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. The SURE Program provides students with an opportunity to perform significant, publishable research under the guidance of an experienced faculty researcher.

Flannery, a junior biology major at Stonehill, along with one other student, will work with Irvin Pan, assistant professor of Biology on Expression, Function, and Evolution of the TAGL1 gene in Wild Relatives of Tomato.

The Tomato AGAMOUS-Like1 (TAGL1) gene has been shown to regulate many aspects of fruit ripening in tomato plants. This project seeks to determine whether this gene functions similarly in other species related to the tomato or if the gene's functions have changed. Flannery will study the gene in S. piminellifolium, another relative that produces small, red fruits. The work resulting from these studies will be presented at the 2013 Eastern New England Biological Conference, as well as the ASPB Plant Biology 2013 Conference.

The scholars and their faculty mentors are the 17th group to work under the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. SURE Scholars will engage in weekly meetings to discuss the progress of their projects and other topics of general interest, and will be paid a stipend for their full-time service. All SURE Scholars will present summaries of their summer's work at an all-campus poster session in the early fall.

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