Current Work
Alicia (Ali) Sivitz is a postdoctoral researcher in the Guerinot Lab studying how a family of transcription factors regulates iron-deficiency responses in Arabidopsis. bHLH subgroup 1b (bHLH38, bHLH39, bHLH100, and bHLH101) are strongly up-regulated in response to low-iron conditions. However, their exact role in iron-deficiency remains to be elucidated.
“I am interested in understanding why there have been recent duplications in this sub-clade to create four extremely similar transcription factors. They are tightly co-regulated and show very little differences in expression patterns. By creating higher-order mutants, we have begun to uncover non-overlapping roles of each transporter. Our main goal is to understand the role that each transcription factor plays either in concert or uniquely to regulate iron-deficiency responses. We use the model system Arabidopsis thaliana to study this system but these genes have been shown to underlie important yield QTLs in crops like soybean.”
A brief history:
Alicia Sivitz did her PhD with Dr. John M. Ward at the University of Minnesota studying sucrose transporter function and redundancy. She has worked briefly in industry to improve bacterial degradation of algae for biofuel production. She did an EMBO funded postdoc in France with Drs. Gregory Vert and Cathy Curie studying iron homeostasis and transcriptional regulators of iron-deficiency responses.
Publications:
Arabidopsis bHLH100 and bHLH101 Control Iron Homeostasis via a FIT-Independent Pathway
Alicia B. Sivitz, Victor Hermand, Catherine Curie, Grégory Vert
PLoS One. 2012; 7(9): e44843. Published online 2012 September 11. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044843
PMCID: PMC3439455
Evolution of Plant Sucrose Uptake Transporters
Anke Reinders, Alicia B. Sivitz, John M. Ward
Front Plant Sci. 2012; 3: 22. Published online 2012 February 15.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2012.00022
PMCID: PMC3355574
Arabidopsis Sucrose Transporter AtSUC1 Is Important for Pollen Germination and Sucrose-Induced Anthocyanin Accumulation
Alicia B. Sivitz, Anke Reinders, John M. Ward
Plant Physiol. 2008 May; 147(1): 92–100. doi: 10.1104/pp.108.118992
PMCID: PMC2330317
Arabidopsis Sucrose Transporter AtSUC9. High-Affinity Transport Activity, Intragenic Control of Expression, and Early Flowering Mutant Phenotype
Alicia B. Sivitz, Anke Reinders, Meghan E. Johnson, Anthony D. Krentz, Christopher P.L. Grof, Jai M. Perroux, John M. Ward
Plant Physiol. 2007 January; 143(1): 188–198. doi: 10.1104/pp.106.089003
PMCID: PMC1761979
An engineered microbial platform for direct biofuel production from brown macroalgae.
Wargacki AJ, Leonard E, Win MN, Regitsky DD, Santos CN, Kim PB, Cooper SR,
Raisner RM, Herman A, Sivitz AB, Lakshmanaswamy A, Kashiyama Y, Baker D,
Yoshikuni Y. Science. 2012 Jan 20;335(6066):308-13. doi:
10.1126/science.1214547. PubMed PMID: 22267807.
Analysis of the transport activity of barley
sucrose transporter HvSUT1.
Sivitz AB, Reinders A, Ward JM. Plant Cell Physiol. 2005 Oct;46(10):1666-73. Epub
2005 Aug 8. PubMed PMID: 16091371.
The Cre-loxP recombination-based reporter system for plant transcriptional expression studies.
Shigaki T, Vyzasatya RR, Sivitz AB, Ward JM, Sze H, Hirschi KD.
Plant Mol Biol. 2005 May;58(1):65-73. PubMed PMID: 16028117.
Proteasome-mediated turnover of the transcriptional activator FIT is required for plant
iron-deficiency responses.
Sivitz A, Grinvalds C, Barberon M, Curie C, Vert G. Plant J. 2011 Jun;66(6):1044-52. doi:
10.1111/j.1365-313X.2011.04565.x. Epub 2011 Apr 5. PubMed PMID: 21426424.
Functional analysis of LjSUT4, a vacuolar sucrose transporter from Lotus japonicus.
Reinders A, Sivitz AB, Starker CG, Gantt JS, Ward JM. Plant Mol Biol. 2008
Oct;68(3):289-99. doi: 10.1007/s11103-008-9370-0. Epub 2008 Jul 10. PubMed PMID:
18618272.
Arabidopsis sucrose transporter AtSUC1 is important for pollen germination and sucrose-induced anthocyanin accumulation.
Sivitz AB, Reinders A, Ward JM.
Plant Physiol. 2008 May;147(1):92-100. doi: 10.1104/pp.108.118992. Epub 2008 Mar
21. PubMed PMID: 18359840; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2330317.
Sugarcane ShSUT1: analysis of sucrose transport activity and inhibition by sucralose.
Reinders A, Sivitz AB, Hsi A, Grof CP, Perroux JM, Ward JM. Plant Cell
Environ. 2006 Oct;29(10):1871-80. PubMed PMID: 16930313.