Associate Professor, Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources
Ph.D. (1986) Perdue University

Phone: 706-542-1710
Email: jeffdean@uga.edu

Research in the Dean Lab

Biochemistry and molecular biology of plant growth and development. Wood formation and biodegradation. Forest tree biotechnology. Functional genomics in forestry and natural resources.

Lab Members

Awards

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Research Interests

My research interest are in the general areas of biochemical and molecular genetic aspects of plant growth, development and responses to the environment; metal uptake and metabolism, particularly with regard to iron and copper, in plants, fungi and bacteria; phytoremediation processes to take up heavy metal contaminants or degrade organic xenobiotic compounds; and the application of enzymes to industrial processes, with particular emphasis on plant biomass conversion, delignification, fiber processing and recycling. Current laboratory projects include structure-function relationships in multicopper oxidases and the physiological roles played by these enzymes in plants, fungi and bacteria; functional genomic studies of
wood formation in tree stems and the responses of tree roots to environmental and nutritional stresses; genomic responses of plants exposed to soil-contaminating munitions, such as TNT and RDX; and the role of ethylene biosynthetic enzymes in the formation of undesirable reaction wood in trees.

Selected Publications

Merkle, S.A. and Dean, J.F.D. (2000). Forest tree biotechnology. Curr. Op. Biotech. 11: 298-302

Hoopes, J.T. and Dean, J.F.D. (2001). Zymogram staining of peroxidases and laccases with 1,8-diaminonaphthalene. Anal. Biochem. 293: 96-101

Kim, C.H., Lorenz, W.W., Hoopes, J.T. and Dean, J.F.D. (2001). Oxidation of phenolate siderophores by the multicopper oxidase encoded by the Escherichia coli yacK gene. J. Bacteriol. 183: 4866-4875

Lorenz, W.W. and Dean, J.F.D. (2002). SAGE profiling and demonstration of differential gene expression along the axial developmental gradient of lignifying xylem in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda). Tree Physiol. 22: 301-310

Ekman, D.R., Lorenz, W.W., Przybyla, A.E., Wolfe, N.L., and Dean, J.F.D. (2003). Transcriptome responses in Arabidopsis thaliana roots exposed to TNT. Plant Physiol. 133: 1397-1406

Hoopes, J.T., and Dean, J.F.D. (2004). Ferroxidase activity in a plant multicopper oxidase. Plant Physiol. Biochem. 42: 27-33

McCaig, B.M., Meagher, R.B., and Dean, J.F.D. (2005). Gene structure and molecular analysis of the laccase-type multicopper oxidase gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana. Planta 221: 619-636

Ekman, D.R., Wolfe, N.L., and Dean, J.F.D. (2005) Gene expression changes in Arabidopsis thaliana seedling roots exposed to the munition hexhydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39: 6313-6320

Lorenz, W.W., Sun, F, Liang, C., Zhao, X., Kolychev, D., Wang, H., Cordonnier-Pratt, M-M. , Pratt, L.H. and Dean, J.F.D. (2005) Water stress-responsive genes in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) roots identified by analyses of expressed sequence tag libraries. Tree Physiol. (in press)