Congratulations to Keith Slotkin, whose grant entitled "Re-evaluating Mechanisms of RNA-mediated Initiation of Transposable Element Silencing in Plants” has been funded by the National Science Foundation for three years. Dr. Slotkin's lab focuses on transposable elements, which are DNA fragments in a genome that can mobilize and create mutations by inserting into new locations. In this project his lab will use modern genomics-enabled approaches in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, to examine the mechanisms that interfere with transposable element mobilization, expanding our understanding of how transposable element silencing is triggered.