Stella Jiaying Chen was singled out as one of the best plant biology undergraduates in North America, earning the SURF fellowship from the American Society of Plant Biologists to work in Professor Heather McFarlane’s lab for the Summer of 2025.
Chen’s plant biology research journey began with one serendipitous CLNX search. When she came across the Work-Study posting for the McFarlane lab, she quickly connected the experience required for the position to her experiences with DNA extraction and PCR in undergraduate lab course BIO130. Despite only being in her first year, Chen sent in her Work-Study application and was ultimately successful.
She began her 2024-2025 placement by providing support to graduate students in the lab. But she soon became interested in pursuing her own research program. Fostering this interest, McFarlane suggested she apply to the SURF fellowship for the 2025 summer term.
The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship is granted to undergraduates to support laboratory research in plant biology over the summer. Applicants write a project statement and a personal statement and provide a mentoring statement from the supervising faculty member. The award includes a stipend for the student and money to buy supplies for experiments.
“Receiving this award was unexpected; it hasn’t really hit me since I’m just working in the lab every day,” says Chen. “I have to present my research in a poster at the annual ASPB conference, so thinking about that is when I get excited… and nervous.”
Chen transitioned to conducting her own research quickly and is enjoying the informative (and pretty) data she is gradually pulling out of her microscopy studies. She is working with cutting edge technology in transmission electron microscopy and spinning disc fluorescence microscopy.
McFarlane’s lab looks at how the cell wall is constructed in plants, using the Arabidopsis model plant. Chen is focusing on Quasimodo mutants which have a defect in the synthesis of pectin, a crucial component of the cell wall.
The mutant seedling’s shoots have short cells with holes forming where cells fail to stick to their neighbours in the expected orderly fashion. Their leaves look like they are peeling as cells lose their connection to adjacent cells during elongation.
Natalie Hoffmann, a former graduate student in the McFarlane lab, had observed aggregates in Quasimodo mutants during her studies, naming them “qua bodies.” Chen describes their appearance as similar to microscopic fried eggs.
Following up on this work, Chen has been aiming to find whether qua bodies may contain pectin. She has also been working to determine whether NKS1 mutants, which similarly have mutations in pectin synthesis, also contain qua bodies.
Reflecting on her research experience thus far, Chen expresses her immense appreciation for the opportunity to work on a project, a task often reserved for upper year students.
Congratulations, Stella!