The AWG member spotlight is meant to recognize members that have made significant contributions to their AWGs, and our first member spotlight goes to Dr Parul Gupta. Dr Gupta, a research associate at Oregon State University and member of the Plant AWG, was nominated by Dr Richard Barker for her dedication and outstanding contributions to the Plant AWG. She is a Plant Molecular Biologist with expertise in genomics, transcriptomics, and bioinformatics and is passionate about Space Biology research. Dr Gupta investigates alternatively splicing events, novel transcribed regions, acquired mutations, and downstream effects on the structure and function of the genes in response to spaceflight and microgravity. Dr Gupta’s pipeline for detection of alternatively spliced genes is in the process of being implemented on GeneLab data. The methodologies and data analytics workflows developed by Dr Gupta have the potential to be applied to current and future data from both plant and non-plant species (ie humans, mice, yeast, and other models) in response to spaceflight. Her work provides fundamental insight into how plants adapt in responses to spaceflight environment.
