Lab Members
Dr. A. Mark Settles
Principal Investigator
Dr. A. Mark Settles was a Vasil-Monsanto professor of Plant Cell and Molecular Biology in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. Recently, Dr. Settles accepted a new position at NASA AMES Research Center as Synthetic Biology Lead Investigator! Subsequently, he was awarded the status of Emeritus Professor here at UF.
While at UF, his research focused primarily on genes that influence the growth and development of corn seeds, though he is also interested in machine vision learning research and growing algae in space for bioregenerative life support systems.
His most recent research at UF bridges cell and developmental biology to applied plant breeding and space biology. The unifying scientific theme of his work has been studying the cereal endosperm both to enable systems approaches to solve agricultural problems and to replicate this cellular program in diverse species. The projects Dr. Settles has led seek to improve corn genetics, breeding technologies, and identify economically valuable traits for future improvement. Major goals of the research program he initiated here at UF are: to identify germplasm sources that have high tolerance for being planted in cold soils, to better understand starch synthesis and sugar accumulation in the endosperm, to develop near infrared spectroscopy techniques to predict seed and eating quality, and to develop technologies for doubled haploid breeding. As part of these goals, the lab is exploring the use of photosynthetic microorganisms for synthetic biology of endosperm storage molecule accumulation. His synthetic biology goals serve dual purposes in gaining a better understanding of how endosperm accumulates sugars, starch, protein, and oil as well as potentially developing bioregenerative life support systems for space exploration.
Since Dr. Settles has accepted his new position at NASA, Dr. Curt Hannah - Emeritus Professor at UF and maize biology expert - has stepped in to assist the remaining lab members in fulfilling their research goals. The lab is no longer recruiting additional students.
