People
Nick Kaplinsky
Office: 402 Singer Hall
Lab: 422/423 Singer Hall
nkaplin1@swarthmore.edu
610.328.8039
BA Reed College, Portland OR
PhD UC Berkeley, Berkeley CA
Postdoc Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford CA
I teach plant biology and genomics, supervise research in the lab, ride mountain bikes, and drink lots of coffee.
The lab in the Summer of 2019.
From left to right: Madison Snyder '21, Sarah Weinshel '22, Kelly Finke '21, Josephine Thrasher '21, Kent Chen '22, and Nick. We're better at science than Putt-Putt.
Summer 2018 research students
Madison Snyder '21 (left) and Shantal Garcia '20 (right) both worked on cloning new genes using the Rootscope.
The lab in the Spring of 2016.
From left to right: Nick, Leela Breitman '17, Rachel Boone '17, Stephanie Wey '16, Julian Segert '17, David Tian '17, Maxine Annoh '18, Christina Rabeler, and Akida Lebby '16
The lab in the spring of 2015.
From left to right: Ximena Anlue '15, Erin Kast '15, Akida Lebby '16, David Tian '17, Leela Breitman '17, Stephanie Wey, '16, Rachel Boone '17, Nick, Christina Rabeler, Maxine Annoh '18, Cassie Vondrak '15. Not pictured is Emma Close '17
The lab in the fall of 2014.
From left to right: Nick, Cassie Vondrak '15, Erin Kast '15, Stephanie Wey '16, Ximena Anleu '15, Christina Rabeler, Azucena Lucatero '16
The lab in the summer of 2014.
From left to right: Akida Lebby '16, Erin Kast '15, Nick, Christina Rabeler- Akida is determining how the heat shock response mutant eg6affects thermotolerance and is building new fluorescent reporter constructs.
- Erin is characterizing and cloning a mutant which affects the kinetics of the heat shock response.
- Christina clones genes, does more genetics than Mendel, and manages the lab.
Students in the lab 2012-2013.
Erin Kast '15 (left) and Duyen Nguyen '13 (right).
The lab in the summer of 2011.
From left to right in the tree: Nick, Elan Silverblatt-Buser '12, Zack Gershenson '12, Melissa Frick '12, Rosalie Lawrence '12On the ground: Ray Hess '13, Christina Rabeler
- Elan has cloned a BOB1 modifier called BOM and is using it to gain insights into how a small heat shock protein affects developmental patterning.
- Zack is cloning a seed coat mutant using the next generation sequencing data set that Elan and Christina generated.
- Meliss a is cloning a second BOB1 modifier and is also characterizing BOM and its interactions with BOB1.
- Rosalie is working on understanding the cell biology and signal transduction of high temperature responses.
- Ray is characterizing temperature dependent changes in auxin distribution.
- Christina works on many projects, helps everyone, and keeps the lab running smoothly.
The lab in the summer of 2010.
Elan Silverblatt-Buser '12 and Julia Cooper '12. Elan worked on mapping the BOB1 modifier BOM and Julia used immunoprecipitation followed by mass spectrometry to identify proteins which physically interact with BOB1 in plant cells.
The lab in the spring of 2010.
From left to right: Elan Silverblatt-Buser '12, Bernie Koch '12, Andrew Hwang '10, Nick, Cathy Ng '10, and Jennifer Spindel '10.- Elan is mapping and cloning BOB1 modifiers to gain insights into how a small heat shock protein affects developmental patterning.
- Bernie is developing bioinformatics tools to use next generation sequencing data to identify fast neutron deletions in a pooled population.
- Andrew is characterizing the cellular responses to sodium in Arabidopsis roots.
- Cathy continues to characterize the molecular and organismal functions of AtHSBP1 which regulates abiotic stress responses.
- Jennifer is mapping, cloning, and characterizing the semi-dominant Barren-unbranched mutant in maize.
The lab in the spring of 2008.
From left to right: Cathy Ng '10, Steen Hoyer '09, Ayanna Johnson '09, Evan Trager '08, Nick and Eden '28ish, Dahlia Perez '08, and Jennifer Spindel '10.- Cathy works on the cell and organismal roles of AtHSBP1 which we hypothesize regulates multiple abiotic stress responses.
- Steen and Ayanna are using molecular and biochemichal approaches to demonstrate BOB's function in vitro.
- Evan works on cell wall biosynthesis using molecular genetics and cell biology.
- Dahlia is using immunocytochemistry to demonstrate exactly where BOB is in the cell, and
- Jennifer is recovering from a genetic screen and deciding what to do next.
People in the lab during the summer, 2007. From left to right: Nick, Jennifer Spindel '10, Ayanna Johnson '09, and Frances Taschuk '10.
Last summer (2006), the following students worked in the lab. They all continued their research projects in the lab during the 2006/2007 academic year. Dahlia and Evan will both be presenting posters at the ASPB meeting in Chicago this summer
Dahlia Perez '08
Dahlia worked on characterizing BOB transcriptional responses to heat stress and also characterized auxin response defects in bob mutants.
Evan Trager '08
Evan studied a new mutant called sawfish (sfs) which affects phyllotaxis in the infloresence. He used a GFP fusion to determine SFS's sub-cellular localization and also performed a detailed phenotypic analysis which suggests that SFS mediates auxin responses during development.
Nikos Svoronos '07
Nikos is using biochemical approaches to identify BOB protein interactors. After purifying interacting proteins he will identify them using mass spectrometry and then characterize the interacting genes by using reverse genetics to knock them out.