Daniel Szymanski

Daniel Szymanski Profile Picture

Professor, Botany and Plant Pathology
Ph.D., University of Illinois

Contact Info:

dszyman@purdue.edu
765-494-8092
WSLR 226
https://ag.purdue.edu/agry/Pages/profile.aspx?strAlias=szymandb&intDirDeptID=7 

Training Group(s):
Plant Biology
Computational and Systems Biology

Active Mentor - currently hosting PULSe students for laboratory rotations and recruiting PULSe students into the laboratory; serves on preliminary exam committees

Current Research Interests:

The organization of the microtubule and actin filament cytoskeleton arrays plays an important role in defining cell shape and tissue development. However, there is very little mechanistic understanding of how the cytoskeletons are organized and regulated. For example, how do hormonal signals lead to cytoskeletal re-organization and a polarized growth response? What cellular intermediaries define cytoskeletal organization and pattern the cell wall during growth? The long-term goal of my research team is to analyze the multiscale control of growth from protein complexes to the morphogenetic control of cells, tissues, and organs. Arabidopsis leaf epidermal development is being used as an experimental model to better understand morphogenesis control. The leaf epidermis contains several highly polarized cell types that display unique responses to microtubule and microfilament disrupting agents. The lab is now using modern molecular genetic tools, multivariate live cell imaging, and finite element computational modeling of plant morphogenesis to discover how plants integrate cytoskeletal and cell wall systems during growth and development. The lab also has created new high throughput proteomic methods to analyze the location and composition of protein complexes in a variety of plant species, cell types, and differing genetic or environmental conditions.

Selected Publications:

Yanagisawa, M., Desyatova, A.S., Belteton, S., Mallery. E. M, Turner, J.A., Szymanski, D. B. 2015 Patterning mechanisms of cytoskeletal and cell wall systems during leaf trichome morphogenesis. Nature Plant 1:15014.

Wu, T.-Z., Belteton, S., Lunsford, J., Szymanski, D.B., Umulis, D.B. 2016 Quantitative image analysis of pavement cell morphogenesis with LobeFinder. Plant Physiol. 171:2331-2342.

Uma, A., McBride, Z., Chen, D., Xie, J., Szymanski, D.B. 2017 Analysis of protein complexes in Arabidopsis leaves using size exclusion chromatography and label-free protein correlation profiling, Journal of Proteomics. 166:8-18.

McBride, Z., Chen, D., Reick, C., Xie, J., Szymanski, D.B., 2017 Global analysis of membrane-associated protein oligomerization using protein correlation profiling. Mol Cell Proteomics. 16:1972–1989.

Belteton, S., et al. 2018 Reassessing the roles of PIN proteins and anticlinal microtubules during pavement cell morphogenesis. Plant Physiol. 176:432-449. 10.1104/pp.17.01554

Yanagisawa, M., Alonso, J.M., and Szymanski, D.B. 2018 Microtubule-dependent confinement of a cell signaling and actin polymerization control module regulates polarized cell growth. Current Biol 28, 2459-2466.

McBride, Z., Chen, D., Lee, Y., Aryal, U., Xie, J., Szymanski, D.B., 2019 A label free mass spectrometry method to predict endogenous protein complex composition. Mol Cell Proteomics. 18: 1588-1606.

Lee, Y., and Szymanski, D.B. 2021 Multimerization variants as potential drivers of neofunctionalization. Science Advances 7: eabf0984.

Belteton, S., Lee, W., Hatam, F.A., Szymanski, M.R., Marley, M.W., Turner, J.A., and Szymanski, D.B. 2021 Real-time conversion of tissue-scale mechanical forces into an interdigitated growth pattern. Nature Plants 7, 826-841.

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