We are excited to receive North Carolina Biotechnology Center funding through a Flash Grant to work on Fusarium wilt in watermelon as a proof of concept for biocontrol of fungal pathogens using endohyphal bacteria. This project is built on preliminary work done by Dallas Moses and we hope to have the first story preprinted in the coming months.
Updates
New Year, New Project
Categories: Updates
Congrats Fall 2025 Graduates!
Categories: Updates
Alison Moore graduated with her M.Sc. degree from the lab and got her own lab artwork. We will miss her contagious curiosity and constant puns. Alison was the first student to join the Carter lab when it started, so seeing her finish up is bittersweet!
Sara Field graduated with her bachelors, and is staying on as a masters student continuing her bioinformatics project looking at bacterial genomic DNA within fungal DNA sequencing.
Lots to be Thankful for!
Ruth Wright presented a poster at SACNAS‘ NDiSTEM meeting, representing the UNC Charlotte chapter which many lab members are involved in.
Alison Moore presented a poster at the North Carolina chapter meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
Dallas Moses and Bhuwan Abbot both gave talks at NC ASM, but in bigger news, they also both passed their candidacy exams!
Overall, we had a blast at the NC ASM meeting and are looking forward to UNC Charlotte hosting next year!
New Honors Students
Categories: Updates
We are excited to have Ty and Lea working with us on honors theses this year. They are starting in the lab this week and will be working on plant virulence assays and fungal genome assembly. Happy first day of class for fall 2025!
Our first graduate graduate!
Categories: Updates
Aylha Pferschy defended her Master’s thesis making her the first graduate student to graduate from the Carter Lab. Congrats Aylha!!
Her lab art contribution is a gel electrophoresis image of some mutants she worked hard to generate. She signed a copy for our comp lab and takes with her a copy signed by other lab members.
A very busy summer
Categories: Updates
I am behind in posting because we have had so much going on this summer but here is the snapshot so far:
- Atalia Cooper and Eric Brooks joined the lab as OUR scholars for the summer, with Sara also being supported by OUR.
- Bhuwan Abbot and Ruth Wright presented at Evolution in Athens, Georgia.
- Dallas Moses did outreach at the local library showing off her watermelon plants and then went to the Applied and Environmental Microbiology Gordon Research Conference.
- Morgan went to the Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions Congress in Cologne, Germany.
- We posted a new preprint!
Spring Graduation 2025 🍄🍉🐝
Categories: Updates
Congratulations to our Carter Lab graduates! MyAsia Owens, Taylor Yonemura, and Paola Diaz-Matamoros all finished their Bachelor’s degrees. Taylor was even spotlighted by the Klein College of Science in this wonderful article. We will miss them but can’t wait to see what they accomplish next!
Undergraduate Research Conference - 4 fantastic presentations
Categories: Updates
MyAsia Owens, Paola Diaz-Matamoros, and Sara Field all presented posters at the UNC Charlotte 2025 Undergraduate Research Conference yesterday. Taylor Yonemura presented a talk about their project on bee dispersal of fungal spores (not pictured because the room was dark). Congrats to Sara on her Honorable Mention!
Awards Season in the Carter Lab 🏆
Categories: Updates
We are so excited to spotlight Dallas Moses as an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention! UNC Charlotte had 5 honorable mentions and 1 award this year, and this prestigious recognition highlights our lab’s commitment to student training and Dallas’ hard work on her projects.
We are also grateful to the ROOT&SHOOT Research Coordination Network (support from NSF) for TWO mentor/mentee pair travel scholarships awarded to our lab. This summer, Bhuwan Abbot and Morgan Carter will be attending the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions conference in Germany and Dallas Moses and Paola Diaz-Matamoros will be attending the American Society for Plant Biology’s meeting in Wisconsin. We absolutely could not make this happen without the support from NSF and this Research Coordination Network and we can’t wait to make the most of these opportunities! Connect with us there!
Spring Break musings
Categories: Updates
We’re in the midst of a busy spring semester and it is a little quiet now over spring break. I wanted to highlight a bit of what we have been up to. Grad student Dallas Moses gave a research talk to Envirothon students from local schools as part of a UNC Charlotte showcase. We also have had some productive lab meetings with a new format where each person brings one slide of data or experiment planning to get feedback on. A little glimpse into our computational lab! Ruth Wright and Aylha Pferschy passed their comprehensive exams for PhD and MSc programs, respectively, so big congrats to them for progressing in their degree programs. Finally, we have lots of abstract writing and paper writing going on, so we are excited to share more of our work with the community soon.
