Biology Faculty Profiles
Anna Edlund, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology and an expert in pollen biology, recently received a two-year, $128,000 National Science Foundation grant to study pollen cell behaviors in flowers.
"Plants may not be able to move about, but they are very selective about their mates," professor Edlund explained. "This grant will support our studies of how some pollen, or sperm-containing cells, are more successful than others in the race to fertilize."
Dr. Edlund's research is also funded by two other NSF grants, one on the patterning and composition of the cell wall of pollen grains, and another on pollen germination behaviors (pollen germinates after the grains land on the female part of the flower). Dr. Edlund and a group of student researchers will use microsurgery and a specialized microscope to study pollen cells that glow green, red, or blue (because of their expression of different colored fluorescent proteins) as the pollen cells race to fertilize the egg cells deep within the flower.
Edlund's Interdisciplinary Project
Edlund, along with artists from Lelavision, a Washington-based performance company, has brought science to life in a multi-sensory performance and interactive blend of sculpture, illustration, music and dance called, "My Anther, My Friend."
This past May, the group performed the piece at the Flint Hills International Children's Festival, at the Ordway Center in St. Paul, MN. Over 1,000 school children saw the piece,and were bussed in for 13 sold-out shows. Visit the festival's Web site.
In addition to the performance piece, Edlund and Ela Lamblin, a sculptor and composer from Lelavision, created an educational video on pollen cell biology and entered it in a video contest funded by the Botanical Society of America, American Society of Plant Biologists, and Canadian Botanical Association.
Check out "Fertile Eyes," Edlund's video about plant fertilization that was selected as the grand prize winner out of 60 entries.
Biographical Sketch
Anna Edlund, Ph.D.
E-mail: aedlund@spelman.edu
Title: Assistant Professor
Spelman: 2003
Degree(s) | Year Awarded:
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2000
Postdoctoral Work University of Chicago, 2001-2003
B.A. Swarthmore College, 1991
Course(s) Taught:
Developmental Biology BIO 356
Biology of Women BIO 100
General Botany BIO 211
Selected Publication(s):
Swanson, R., Edlund, A.F., Preuss, D. (2004) Species Specificity in Pollen-Pistil Interactions. "Annual Review of Genetics" 38:793-818.
Edlund, A.F., Swanson, R., Preuss, D. (2003) Pollen and Stigma Structure and Function: The Role of Diversity in Pollination. "The Plant Cell" 16: S84-S92.
Palanivelu, R., Brass, L., Edlund, A.F., Preuss, D. (2003) Pollen Tube Growth and Guidance is Regulated by POP2, an "Arabidopsis" Gene that Controls GABA Levels. "Cell" 114: 47-59.
Current Grant Support:
National Science Foundation 2008-2010. Project Title: Genetic and cell behavioral characterization of nonrandom mating in Arabidopsis thaliana
National Science Foundation 2006-2008. Project Title: Unique mechanisms of pollen tube germination in Arabidopsis thaliana.
National Science Foundation 2005-2009. Project Title: Arabidopsis 2010: Functional Analysis of Pollen Exine Assembly
Past Grant Support:
National Institutes of Health . Junior Faculty Development Grant, Center for Biomedical and Behavioral Research at Spelman College 2005-2006. Project Title: The use of quantum dot permeants to characterize cell wall porosity in pollen grains and fungal spores.
Research Interests:
I study cell movements during sexual reproduction and early embryonic development. My current work is on pollination and plant reproduction, using the weed and model genetic organism "Arabidopsis thaliana." After pollen grains are captured by a flower, pollen tubes emerge from the pollen grains, carrying the sperm nuclei to the eggs deep within the receptive female tissue.
To study the early cell polarity, germination and navigation of pollen tubes, I take advantage of several sterile mutants with disrupted cell behaviors, and use a variety of imaging techniques (including time-lapse, low-light fluorescence, confocal laser scanning, transmission and scanning electron, and atomic force microscopy). The ornate surfaces of male and female reproductive cells in flowering plants are among the most rapidly evolving and diverse characters known. I am particularly interested in comparing pollen tube cell behaviors across plant taxa and among pollen grains with dramatically different architectures.
