Congratulations are in order for Ben Peters, a PhD student in Lynette Brownfield's laboratory. Ben has won the NZSPB (New Zealand Society for Plant Biology) Michael McManus Award for Best Student Paper for 2017.
The award was for Ben's paper, “A Conserved cis-Regulatory Module Determines Germline Fate through Activation of the Transcription Factor DUO1 Promoter”, which was published in Plant Physiology earlier this year. The paper describes the identification of key promoter sequences required for the germline regulation of the transcription factor DUO1, which is critical for the production of the male germline in pollen.
As part of his award, he has been invited to present the research at the Plant Science Central conference in Palmerston North in July.