PhD student in Genetics
Ryan Martinez has an impressive list of accomplishments as a fifth-year PhD student. He has a registered patent on a method for genetically engineering fungi that don’t produce spores, based on his work at a biotechnology company prior to graduate school. He’s earned prestigious fellowships during graduate school including the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Gilliam Fellowship. He’s spoken at high-profile conferences and authored several publications in high-impact journals. And, he won the American Society of Plant Biology’s Three Minute Thesis competition on top of it all.
What’s driven him to do all this?
“For the most part, I think it’s just because I love what I do,” Ryan said. He also loves to talk about his research project with anyone who will listen.
Ryan’s research investigates how a species of the plant Grevillea manages to grow so well in low-phosphorous conditions, typically a challenge for plants. When he earned the Gilliam fellowship, he had just figured out how to grow these plants in the lab, which was no small feat of itself. Now, he’s identified a few genes that may be important in Grevillea’s above average phosphorous uptake. Now, Ryan is applying cutting-edge single-cell and spatial RNA sequencing techniques to his plants’ roots to further understand why Grevillea stands out.
“It’s very satisfying to go from saying, ‘We know these plants grow well under low levels of phosphorus’ to ‘We suspect these specific genes are essential for Grevillea’s ability to grow under low phosphorus conditions,’” Ryan said. “My upcoming experiments should help determine whether or not this is the case.”
In his teaching, mentorship, and service, Ryan enjoys supporting people on campus and connecting with wider communities through the Gilliam fellowship cohort. He’s found that same support from staff, like Genetics administrators Annie Anderson and Hannah Kurer, to be crucial.
“I really wouldn’t be able to do any of the networking stuff that I love without them,” Ryan said. “The Genetics faculty, particularly my committee and my advisor Jake Brunkard, are also an absolutely essential part of my success. My project would not be moving in the direction it is without their guidance.”