David W Galbraith

David W Galbraith

Professor, Plant Science
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-9153

Work Summary

I examine the molecular functions of the different cells found in the tissues and organs of plants and animals and how they combine these functions to optimize the health and vigor of the organism.

Research Interest

David Galbraith obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, and postdoctoral training as a NATO Fellow at Stanford University. His first academic appointment was at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and he became Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona in 1989. His research has focused on the development of instrumentation and methods for the analysis of biological cells, organs, and systems. He is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the development and use of flow cytometry and sorting in plants, developing widely-used methods for the analysis of genome size and cell cycle status, and for the production of somatic hybrids. He also was among the first to develop methods for the analysis of gene expression within specific cell types, using markers based on Fluorescent Protein expression for flow sorting these cells, and microarray platforms for analysis of their transcriptional activities and protein complements. Current interests include applications of highly parallel platforms for transcript and protein profiling of minimal sample sizes, and for analysis of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that regulate gene expression during normal development and in diseased states, specifically pancreatic cancer. He is also funded to study factors involved in the regulation of bud dormancy in Vitis vinifera, and has interests in biodiversity and improvement of third-world agriculture. He has published more than 180 scholarly research articles, holds several patents, was elected a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science in 2002, and serves on the editorial board of Cytometry Part A. He is widely sought as a speaker, having presented over 360 seminars in academic, industrial and conference settings. He was elected Secretary of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry in 2016. Keywords: Plant and Animal Cellular Engineering; Biological Instrumentation; Flow Cytometry and Sorting

Publications

Galbraith, D. W., Anderson, M. T., & Herzenberg, L. A. (1999). Flow cytometric analysis and FACS sorting of cells based on GFP accumulation. Methods in Cell Biology, 315-341.
Fernandes, J., Brendel, V., Gai, X. W., Lal, S., Chandler, V. L., Elumalai, P., Galbraith, D. W., Pierson, E. A., & Walbot, V. (2002). Comparison of RNA expression profiles based on maize expressed sequence tag frequency analysis and micro-array hybridization. PLANT PHYSIOLOGY, 128(3), 896-910.
Kimzey, M. J., Zarate, X., Galbraith, D. W., & Lau, S. S. (2011). Optimizing microarray-based in situ transcription-translation of proteins for matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry. Analytical Biochemistry, 414(2), 282-286.

PMID: 21477576;Abstract:

The analysis of self-assembled protein microarrays, using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry, combines two high-throughput platforms for investigation of the proteome. In this article, we describe the fabrication in situ of protein arrays optimized for MALDI characterization. Using the green fluorescent protein (GFP) both as an epitope for immobilization and as a gauge for relative protein expression, we were able to generate amounts of protein on the array slides sufficient for MALDI identification. In addition, expression of N-terminal protein constructs fused to GFP demonstrated mass shifts consistent with that of the full-length protein. We envision this technology to be important for the functional screening of protein interactions. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rangwala, S. H., Elumalai, R., Vanier, C., Ozkan, H., Galbraith, D. W., & Richards, E. J. (2006). Meiotically stable natural epialleles of Sadhu, a novel Arabidopsis retroposon.. PLoS genetics, 2(3), e36.

PMID: 16552445;PMCID: PMC1401498;Abstract:

Epigenetic variation is a potential source of genomic and phenotypic variation among different individuals in a population, and among different varieties within a species. We used a two-tiered approach to identify naturally occurring epigenetic alleles in the flowering plant Arabidopsis: a primary screen for transcript level polymorphisms among three strains (Col, Cvi, Ler), followed by a secondary screen for epigenetic alleles. Here, we describe the identification of stable, meiotically transmissible epigenetic alleles that correspond to one member of a previously uncharacterized non-LTR retroposon family, which we have designated Sadhu. The pericentromeric At2g10410 element is highly expressed in strain Col, but silenced in Ler and 18 other strains surveyed. Transcription of this locus is inversely correlated with cytosine methylation and both the expression and DNA methylation states map in a Mendelian manner to stable cis-acting variation. The silent Ler allele can be converted by the epigenetic modifier mutation ddm1 to a meiotically stable expressing allele with an identical primary nucleotide sequence, demonstrating that the variation responsible for transcript level polymorphism among Arabidopsis strains is epigenetic. We extended our characterization of the Sadhu family members and show that different elements are subject to both genetic and epigenetic variation in natural populations. These findings support the view that an important component of natural variation in retroelements is epigenetic.

Meyers, B. C., Galbraith, D. W., Nelson, T., & Agrawal, V. (2004). Methods for transcriptional profiling in plants. Be fruitful and replicate. Plant Physiology, 135(2), 637-652.

PMID: 15173570;PMCID: PMC514100;