MIE hosts Melody Fu of UBC, Canada
Melody Fu
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Melody is a third-year undergraduate majoring in Applied Plant and Soil Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. She won the Go Global Self-Directed Research Award from UBC to undertake a three-month summer internship at the Molecular Interaction Ecology (MIE) group
of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. Melody will join the ongoing doctoral project of Crispus Mbaluto, where she will gain hands on experiences in the lab. She will be trained to conduct molecular biology and chemical assays that are mainly used by the MIE group for dissecting plant defense systems, for example PCR, qPCR, LC-MSqTof and GC-MS. Furthermore she will apply these multidisciplinary methods to investigate the impact of root-knot nematodes on belowground defense responses during simultaneous interaction with aboveground herbivores. This work will provide useful insight for advancing applied research.