Lab News

Jesseca Hemminger presented a poster describing her work at ASPB's Plant Biology 2025 conference in Milwaukee, WI on July 26-30, 2025. The title of her poster was Investigating the Regulatory Role of miRNA-encoded peptides in Plant Nutrient Homeostasis. Jesseca received Travel Awards from UNT's BioDiscovery Institute, College of Sciences and the Toulouse Graduate School. Congratulations, Jesseca!

Plant Biology 2025 conference logo

The Antunes Lab is happy to welcome our newest graduate student, Swapna Bodampati. After completing 3 lab rotations as part of the admission process for the Biochemistry & Molecular Biology PhD Program, Swapna decided to join the Antunes Lab in the Summer of 2025. Swapna obtained her Master's degree in Chemistry from East Texas A&M University (formerly Texas A&M University - Commerce) before coming to UNT. Welcome to the team, Swapna!

Dr. Antunes gave an oral presentation at the Future of Agriculture for Sustainability Keystone Symposium held in Keystone, CO on January 20-23, 2025. The title of his talk was Rewiring Plant Metabolism with Information Processing Circuits.

Congratulations to Jordan LaChance for successfully defending her Master's thesis on October 28, 2024! The title of her work is "COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BIOMASS, PHYSIOLOGY, AND METABOLOME IN HIGH AND LOW OIL-PRODUCING VARIETIES OF Physaria fendleri, A PROMISING HYDROXY-FATTY ACID RICH OILSEED CROP".

Savio Ferreira's work on developing metabolite sensors and genetically encoded Boolean logic operators to rewire specialized metabolism in plants is now published in New Phytologist. Here's the link to the publication: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19823

Congratulations to Savio Ferreira for being selected by the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee to receive a Recognition Travel Award to attend the Plant Biology 2024 Meeting (PB 2024) in Honolulu, HI, on June 22-26, 2024!

Antunes Lab lunch in April 2024.

Antunes lab lunch photo

The lab's newest research is available as a pre-print in bioRxiv. Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.05.574427 Ferreira, S.S. & Antunes, M.S. (2024) Genetically encoded Boolean logic operators to sense and integrate phenylpropanoid metabolite levels in plants.

Check out our most recent paper in Plant Physiology describing the development of genetically encoded Boolean AND logic gates that are capable of integrating a biotic and an abiotic stress in Arabidopsis plants. Access the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad254

Image of the first page of manuscript in Plant Physiology

Ruhbani Jarral presented a poster describing her work on "CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutation of the microRNA171b gene in Arabidopsis thaliana" at the UNT Scholars Day on April 4, 2023. This annual event is organized by The Honors College at UNT.

Ruhbani standing by poster during Scholars Day

Our invited Mini Review titled "A Logical Way to Reprogram Plants" on genetically encoded Boolean logic gates to reprogram plant function is now published online in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications! This Mini Review is part of the journal's Special Issue on Synthetic Plant and Microbial Biology. Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2023.02.080

BBRC Minireview 2023 first page

Congratulations to Charles Anderson for successfully defending his Master's thesis on October 31, 2022! The title of his thesis is: "Developing a generalizable two-input genetic AND logic gate in Arabidopsis thaliana for multi-signal processing"

Check out our newest publication in ACS Synthetic Biology! Amack, S.C.; Ferreira, S.S.; Antunes, M.S. (2023) Tuning the Transcriptional Activity of the CaMV 35S Promoter in Plants by Single-Nucleotide Changes in the TATA Box. ACS Synthetic Biology 12(1): 178-185. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.2c00457

Antunes Lab alum Stephanie Amack was just accepted into the Biomedical Informatics Masters Program at the UT Health School of Bioinformatics. Congratulations Stephanie!