Doctoral Student Education Education: B.S. University of Wisconsin-Madison Research Research Interests: I'm interested in why some regions of the genome are more likely to acquire new mutations than others. In particular, how chromatin (the combination of DNA and the histone proteins associated with it) influences where mutations occur. Different regions of the genome possess different chromatin profiles; for instance, genes and transposable elements differ in levels of DNA methylation, the types of chemical modifications on their associated histones, and how closely packed their histones are. My work has shown that these differences cause transposable elements to have a higher mutation rate than genes, and is likely due to DNA repair functioning better in gene-like chromatin. Most of my research is done in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and I have experience preparing sequencing libraries for identifying somatic mutations and analyzing several types of sequencing data. Selected Publications Selected Publications: Meyer, C. A., Nelms, B., & Schmitz, R. J. (2025). Nanorate sequencing reveals the Arabidopsis somatic mutation landscape. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 122(48), e2514194122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2514194122
