Jody Banks

Professor

Department: Botany and Plant Pathology
Phone: 765.494.5895
Fax: 765.494.0363
Office: Whistler Hall, Room B028
E-mail: banksj@purdue.edu

Area of Expertise: Plant Molecular and Developmental Biology - genetic and molecular basis of sex determination and differentiation in plants.

Dr. Banks received a Ph.D. in Genetics from Ohio State University in 1985 then did a postdoc at the Carnegie Institution of Washington until 1989 working on the epigenetic regulation of Spm transposable elements in maize. After a short stint at McGill University, Banks moved to Purdue University in 1991 where she started a research program to study the interesting and unique biology of lower vascular plants.

Research in the Banks lab focuses on three topics:

1. sex determination in the fern Ceratopteris richardii; the molecular basis of arsenic hyperaccumulation in the fern Pteris vittata;
2. the genome sequencing of the lycophyte Selaginella mollendorffii.

- Recent Publications

Banks, J. A. (2005). Functional analysis and comparative genomics of expressed sequence tags from the lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii. BMC Genomics, 6, 85-91. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/6/85

Banks, J. A. (2005). Construction of a bacterial artificial chromosome library from the spikemoss Selaginella moellendorffii: A new resource for plant comparative genomics. BMC Plant Biology. http://www.biomedcentral.com

Banks, J. A. (2005). KNOX homeobox genes potentially have similar function in both diploid unicellular and multicellular meristems, but not in haploid meristems. Evolution and Development, 7, 69-78.

Banks, J. A. (2004). 2 proposals for NSF Plant Genome.

Banks, J. A. (2004). A systemic gene silencing method suitable for high throughput, reverse genetic analyses of gene function in fern gametophytes. BMC Plant Biology, 4, 1-6. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/4/6

Banks, J. A. (2004). The Evolution of Seedfree Plants. Cold Spring Harbor Course on Arabidopsis Genetics.

Banks, J. A. (2004). Sex determining mechanisms in land plants. Plant Cell, 16, 61-71.

Banks, J. A. (2004). Arsenic hyperaccumulation in gametophytes of Pteris vittata. A new model system for analysis of arsenic hyperaccumulation. Plant Physiology, 136, 3198-3208.

Banks, J. A. (2002). Deciding among seed free plants for genomic studies.