Abstract

In the face of the global climate change threat, understanding the adaptations that organisms have evolved to handle environmental variation is of particular interest to scientists. With climate change impacting global water availability and increasing the risk of drought for many traditional agricultural areas in the United States (IPCC, 2014, IPCC, 2021, and Kuwayama et al., 2019), desiccation tolerance in vegetative states is one adaptation that is currently receiving a lot of attention. Green algae are particularly useful organisms for understanding this adaptation due to their ubiquity across environments, which has given rise to independently evolved organisms displaying different levels of desiccation tolerance. In comparing the differential gene expression in gene families traditionally linked to desiccation tolerance in green plants, such as Early Light Induced Proteins (ELIPs), Late Embryogenesis Abundant Proteins (LEAs), and Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs), across two closely related strains of algae-Tetradesmus deserticola and Tetradesmus obliquus, which display contrasting levels of tolerance to water loss- we aim to improve our understanding of the drivers of desiccation tolerance in plants.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Green algae--Drought tolerance; Genotype-environment interaction; Climatic changes

Publication Date

12-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Bioinformatics (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences

College

College of Science

Advisor

Elena Lopez Peredo

Advisor/Committee Member

Gary R. Skuse

Advisor/Committee Member

Crista Wadsworth

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

BIOINFO-MS

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