"It is the biggest moment in my life as a scientist," said Siobhan Brady, UC Davis professor of plant biology, upon hearing the news she was selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Brady joins 25 leading scientists across the country, an achievement only had by two other UCD professors. More than 30 current or former Investigators have received Nobel Prizes, according to HHMI, which will invest more than $300 million in this newest cohort over the next seven years.
"HHMI Investigators are not just at the top of their fields of research — they are fearless, creative and innovative," Brady says. From "neuroscience to immunology to structural biology, these scientists come from 19 U.S.
institutions and join HHMI's current Investigator community, comprising more than 250 scientists," per HHMI. Brady is also UCD's first woman selected as an HHMI Investigator. Two male UC Davis faculty members, Jorge Dubcovsky and Neil Hunter, previously received this honor.
Brady is one of a small number of women who became professors from her academic cohort, and depending on the situation, she's often the only woman or one of a minimal number of women in the room, she says. "I myself have been so inspired by and am grateful to the incredible women who have mentored me, and to think that in turn, I may be an inspiration to women who I mentor is very humbling. I hope there will be many more women to come from UC Davis who will also receive this honor!" Brady's lab studies plant roots, "an often overlooked but critical part of the plant," she exclaims.
"A plant's roots serve as a major line of defense against environmental stress to protect the plant as a whole ." She says roots of diverse plant species have found ways to deal with stress by devising cell wall modifications and natural barriers to resist drought, flooding, mineral deficiencies, and other insults that impair plant growth. Her lab's research aims to use these programs to harness the multifaceted and beautiful ways that plants have adapted and evolved to survive on a warming planet.
They do that by studying the plant cell wall, Brady says. This wall can form specialized structures whose shape, composition, and position facilitate distinct stress responses. "We treat root cell walls and development as a 'puzzle': there is an optimal set of "pieces" present in nature, which, when put together in the right cell types, will produce a plant better able to tolerate its harsh environment.
" Brady said the monetary impact of the HHMI designation will facilitate Brady's lab in identifying the "pieces"—cell wall modifications present in evolutionarily divergent species—and elucidating the genetic "rules" that determine their composition, cell type dependence, subcellular position, and function. "With our 'toolbox' of genetically programmable modules, we will test which combinations of modifications in which cell types and positions best allow a plant to deal with a given combination of stresses." She explains that xylem cell walls, which transport water, contain cell walls in "incredible helical, tubular and pitted shapes" that can change in shape, number, and composition in response to different stresses, like drought.
Brady's lab also found a waxy polymer called suberin (the primary substance in cork), which increases in amount in drought conditions. "It's thought to always be present in only one location (cell type) in the root - but we have found in tomatoes that it is in a totally different cell type with the same function ( to better help plants respond to drought). This means that this cell wall modification can be moved to a different position for the same function.
So in principle, we could identify other cell wall modifications that could be moved around to different places in the root to make it more stress-tolerant." She said that orchid roots produce a cell wall modification that looks similar to a xylem cell wall (helical and other arrangements) and can transport water and phosphate in seconds , but they don't know the genes that control this or how it allows for this transport/uptake. "We'd like to learn how they do this.
And, is this program modular like the suberin one? Can it be found in or moved to other cell types with the same function to make the plant better able to respond to drought?" She says the HHMI investment will allow her lab to focus on this area of research but in a way that is not hindered by the typical constraints of government funding. "We can do research that is high risk, high reward. That is - it could definitely fail, but if it works, it will give us the opportunity to answer questions that have never been considered .
It will give me steady funding for lab personnel as well as access to resources to support my lab members' research as well as fostering their careers in ways that have been difficult in today's funding and economic climate." Brady received her bachelor of science in plant molecular biology in 1999 and her Ph.D.
in developmental biology in 2005, both from the University of Toronto. She then completed her postdoc in systems biology at Duke University in 2008. Familiar with Brady's research and accomplishments, colleague UC Berkeley Professor Sabeeha Merchant, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Pioneer Member of the American Society of Plant Biologists, has been impressed with the quantity and quality of her research output.
In 2015 when Merchant became editor-in-chief of The Plant Cell, a major scholarly journal in plant biology, Brady was among the first individuals recruited to the board. "I was looking for young scientists with leadership potential, knowledgeable and professional, respected by peers, fair, and of course, someone with whom I could work. Siobhan exceeded expectations.
She was someone I could rely on; she met deadlines; she was caring; she knew the field; she devoted time to her community," Merchant said. ———— Merchant said it was around this time that Brady lost her postdoc Sharon in a tragic attack in Africa. "I learned of Siobhan's love for her co-workers and mentees at that time .
I admired her resilience. I could feel her sorrow," Merchant said. UC Davis' Dateline's former editor Dave Jones (who retired last year ), wrote about Brady's postdoc, Sharon Gray, and " the promise of other female scientists who have her legacy as a source of support.
" Brady and Gray were in Ethiopia in 2016 helping with the start of a research project and visiting with Sara Gebremeskel of Ethiopia, who completed a three-month internship at UCD. Brady and Gray were driving near the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, during a time of massive anti-government protests, "when a rock crashed through a window, striking and killing Gray. " According to the article, Gebremeskel had completed a three-month internship at UCD shortly before the tragic accident, much to Gray's encouragement.
Her husband, R.J. Cody Markelz, launched the Sharon Gray Foundation, describing the projects (scholarships, travel award fund, and Ethiopian exchange) dedicated to her memory and tracking the beneficiaries.
"Sara's visit fulfilled one of Sharon's last wishes, " Brady is quoted in the article. " It is hard to find the words to adequately express the meaning of this to myself, to my family and to the lab..
. Please only be assured that it gave me some solace, that it was beautiful and yet bittersweet to see Sharon's dream come true, but to not have Sharon here to see it." A year after Sharon's death, according to Dateline, almost $160,000, all of which has been allocated: to endowed scholarships at UC Davis and the University of Illinois; to a travel award fund at the American Society of Plant Biologists, to enable participation by young female investigators in ASPB meetings; and to help pay for Sara's internship.
———— Merchant says Brady is a "first-rate plant biologist " who uses state-of-the-art methodology and approaches to understand root development. "Any multicellular living organism consists of specialized parts or what we commonly know as organs. These organs are built up from cells arranged in patterns.
The pattern is programmed in the genome of the organism, but it responds also to environmental cues. Siobhan wants to understand the events in the program step by step, molecule by molecule, as they are encoded by the genome and as the program responds to environmental cues. Siobhan uses systems biology to discover these steps and what this means is that she looks at behaviors and processes in many distinct individual cells at many different levels — from the DNA and its structure and organization to the mRNA to the protein to the activity or modification of the protein to the metabolites in the cell and the output of the cell (e.
g. growth or response to pest)." Merchant is impressed at how she has expanded her program from the study of a model organism (or lab rat) to crop plants.
This is possible because of the shared evolutionary history of land plants -- with related genes doing related things. But, of course, unique features and differences have been overlaid on the basic program as each plant has evolved to fit its own ecological niche. This adds another dimension of complexity.
"Siobhan's work, therefore, has enormous scope and depth. I am impressed with her capacity, her ways of thinking big and broadly, and yet, investigating deeply and with intellectual and technical rigor, " she said. " Above all, I am impressed with her honesty, her genuine love and respect for her co-workers, her positive attitude to life and work.
I am lucky to know her and count her as a friend." Brady says the accomplishment of becoming an HHMI Investigator is not hers alone . "It is because of my lab members who took a chance on me and joined my lab.
They are the ones performing the research and come together to form an intellectually stimulating and nurturing team." Brady also credits a supportive community of family and friends (both academic and non-academic — "including our awesome neighborhood in Davis, several women in my department and center, and my prior lab in North Carolina who have been a rock for me in good and very challenging times) and generous and brilliant colleagues. Finally, my late postdoctoral supervisor, Philip Benfey.
" " Also, lots and lots of failure , much advice on how to build resilience, including a fantastic therapist, and continued joy in figuring out how the world around us works. Finally: government funding, UC Davis funding, and funding from the Canadian government allowed me to come to the U.S.
" From the time Brady was a Ph.D. student, she has admired two female HHMI Investigators – Joanne Chory and Susan Lindquist– both of whom she gave seminars to while in her graduate program in Toronto.
"When I made it to the finals, I knew I had a 50% chance of success, but I had convinced myself that it was not going to happen. The moment where I found out was incredibly emotional - this will mean so much to my lab's future research, and enables me to pursue directions of my research that I had only dreamed about. " Read more: Sharon Gray Foundation Cody Markelz recently launched the Sharon Gray Foundation website — https://sharongray foundation.
org/ — describing the...
The UC Davis community is mourning the death of postdoctoral researcher Sharon Gray, 31, who lost her life Tuesday during a massive anti-government protest in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Gray, a plant biologist, and UCD associate professor Siobhan Brady, also a plant biologist, were in Ethiopia to start preliminary work on a project with a Netherlands-based organization, university officials said. Her death is a tragic loss for her close-knit department.
The U.S. Embassy attributed Gray’s death to head injuries from a rock thrown by “unknown individuals,” as the vehicle she was riding in was stoned by protesters, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
.
