Grace Donnelly is a cytogeneticist.  She studies how chromosomes behave during cell division, pollen formation, and at other times in the life cycle of the plant. Such cytogenetic studies can clarify the identity of the plant and its relation to other plants.

For Grace, RIWPS Native Plant Symposium: Growing Awareness triggered thoughts about how biological concepts have changed in recent times and how we might, as the symposium suggested, “consider native plants from a new perspective.”

She has offered to help plant devotees leap over the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin, and see how the ideas of Mendel, McClintock, and Watson and Crick lead into the genomics revolution.  She will also show how the ethical problems of gene editing, discovered by Doudna, may be of major benefit to plant biologists.

This program is a combined effort of Rhode Island Wild Plant Society, Rhode Island Natural History Survey and Brown Herbarium.

Fee $10.00; RIWPS and RINHS members $5.00; Brown University Students free

Advance Registration Required for everyone except Brown University Students