Cell Biology of Plant Nematode Parasitism

R. Howard Berg is Director of the Integrated Microscopy Facility at the Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, Missouri. He earned his Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Florida (1977) and received postdoctoral training at the University of Florida and at Oregon State University. After several years managing the biological electron microscopy facility at the University of Florida, he joined the faculty at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, where he became an Associate Professor. He joined the Danforth Plant Science Center in 2000. His research interests include plant cell interactions with nitrogen-fixing endosymbionts, nematodes, and viruses.

Christopher G. Taylor studied Biochemistry (B.S., 1989) at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania followed by a Ph.D. in Genetics (1995) with an emphasis on gene expression in roots at North Carolina State University. In 1995, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Scientist in Nematology at Monsanto Co. in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1999, he became a Senior Scientist and Group Leader of Nematology for Akkadix, Inc. in San Diego, California. From 2001 to the present, he has been a Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri – Columbia and at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. His major research interests include plant cell biology of root biotic interactions, nematology, microbiology, gene expression analysis and functional genomics.