Chandler Sutherland

PhD student in Plant Biology

Grace Kase Fellow

I am drawn to study plants because of their omnipresence in our lives--our food, fuel, air, and even our happiness rely on plants. Their distant evolutionary divergence from us allows for unique opportunities to study ancient, conserved systems like innate immune response and understand how sessile organisms respond to and overcome challenges from the changing environments around them. I am excited to expand my computational skills in the Krasileva lab and investigate how plants, lacking vertebrate adaptive immunity, are able to achieve sufficient receptor diversity to fight against pathogens. My undergraduate work here at UC Berkeley focused on photosynthesis and high light stress, with an additional project at the University of Copenhagen studying secondary metabolite synthesis in lupin. Outside of the lab, I like looking at wild, not-Arabidopsis plants on hikes and backpacking trips, surfing, and perfecting my mixed berry pie recipe.