Through this summer within the CAFE summer scholars’ program, I worked alongside Kelly Allen to help research more about effector virulence components. My project focused on creating and optimizing a working agrobacterium infiltration protocol for effectors in Nicotiana Benthimiana and making sure the agroinfiltration would yield phenotypic results. We focused on a conserved effector found in basil downy mildew with a canonical RXLR motif. Many optimizations were added to the protocol for more consistent results and data and images were taken to study the trends of the results. This past summer, my skills grew in working independently, running a week-long experiment all alone multiple times, and looking at past results and focusing on troubleshooting as I go.
