Faculty member since 2008
Mentewab Ayalew, Ph.D., is a professor in Biology at Spelman College.
Recent Awards
NSF - RUI: Mechanism of antibiotic resistance conferred by plant ABC proteins (2011-2015).
Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network, Faculty Development Program (2011-2013).
Faculty Sabbatical Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/HHMI (2011).
Ph.D., Institut National Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Agronomie de Toulouse (INP-ENSAT)
M.A., INP-ENSAT
Diplome d'Ingenieur Agronome, INP-ENSAT
Bio115: Organismal Form and Function
Bio211: Plant Biology with Lab
Bio475: Methods in Molecular Biology
Bio487: Research in Plant Biology
Bio487: Research in Molecular Biology
FYE 101-102: First Year Experience
My area of interest is in understanding the biological basis of plants’ adaptation to various stresses, especially exposure to antibiotics produced by soil bacteria. I use a combination of large-scales studies and investigations focused on the antibiotic resistance gene Atwbc19 to understand the mechanisms involved. In so doing, I am particularly like to engage undergraduate students in research and share the excitement of our findings.
Mentewab A., Nichols I., Hardy R., Davis K., Carlington B., Heckard D. 2014. Analysis of conserved motifs in the plant specific group of ABC transporters orthologous with AtWBC19. BMC Res Notes. Submitted.
Mentewab A., Matheson K., Adebiyi M., Robinson S., Elston B. 2014. RNA-seq analysis of the effect of kanamycin and the ABC transporter AtWBC19 on Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings reveals changes in metal content. PLoS ONE. In revision.
Mentewab A., Jacobsen M. and Flowers R. 2011. Incomplete homogenization of 18S ribosomal DNA coding regions in Arabidopsis thaliana. BMC Res Notes 4:93.
Burris K., Mentewab A., Ripp S. and Stewart C. N. Jr. 2008. An Arabidopsis thaliana ABC transporter that confers kanamycin resistance in transgenic plants does not endow resistance to Escherichia coli. Microbial Biotech. 1:191-195.
Yuan J.S., Burris N.R., Stewart N.R, Mentewab A. and Stewart C. N. Jr. 2007. Statistical tools for transgene copy number estimation based on real-time PCR. BMC Bioinformatics, 8 (Suppl 7): S6 (doi:10.1186/1471-2105-8-S7-S6).
Mentewab A. and Stewart C. N. Jr., 2005. Overexpression of an Arabidopsis thaliana ABC transporter confers kanamycin resistance to transgenic plants. Nat. Biotechnol. 23: 1177-1180.