Despite being miles away from the redwood forests of California, a UW-Madison graduate student will begin unlocking these tall trees’ secrets.
Alison Scott, a graduate student in the Department of Botany, received a grant from the Save the Redwoods League, an organization that aims to protect and restore the redwood forests.
“[This grant] will allow me to actually do the things I've been thinking and talking about for almost a year,” Scott said.
Her research will focus on the coastal redwood that grows in foggy areas of central and northern California.
According to Scott, the genetic make-up of these trees has long puzzled scientists, but only recently has science advanced enough to study their genome.
Through her research, she hopes to improve the overall understanding of the redwood in the science community.
Having received her undergraduate degree in biology from California State University in Los Angeles, Scott already knows a lot about the redwoods and is excited to study them at UW-Madison.
Scott works in the Baum Laboratory under the direction of Professor David Baum in the Department of Botany.
“In the Botany Department, most grad students develop their own project and procure their own funding for research, so I see this as an integral part of my development as a Ph.D. student and a researcher,” Scott said.
She explained there are three varieties of redwood—two that are native to California, including the giant sequoia and the coast redwood and one that is native to China, the dawn redwood.
The subject of her study will be the coast redwood, which is known for being taller and more slender than the giant sequoia, which has a massive trunk. Scott also said that advances in science research now make it possible to do genome sequencing faster and cheaper while also making it possible to analyze the results.
Story by Holly Hartung, College of Letters & Science