An Everyday DNA blog article
Written by: Sarah Sharman, PhD
Illustrated by: Cathleen Shaw
In 2022, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology partnered with the City of Dothan to create the HudsonAlpha Wiregrass, a secondary campus in south Alabama. HudsonAlpha Wiregrass aims to bring HudsonAlpha’s three-prong mission—genomics research, education, and economic development—to the Wiregrass region.
Currently, HudsonAlpha Wiregrass has four full-time employees. I met Abby Burch, the lab manager of HudsonAlpha Wiregrass, shortly after she accepted the job. She lives in Dothan, but she came to HudsonAlpha for a 2-week boot camp of sorts to start learning everything she needed to know to run the lab in Dothan.
As we walked the double-helix pathway on HudsonAlpha’s campus, Abby explained her background and future goals. As I’ve gotten to know Abby better over the past year, her drive and passion for her work remain among the most inspirational things to me. I decided it was time I interviewed her for the blog so that everyone could learn about Abby and the cool work she helps support at HudsonAlpha Wiregrass. For this installment of Everyday DNA, I’m pleased to introduce you to Abby Burch.
Sarah Sharman: Hi Abby! Tell me a little bit about your background.
Abby Burch: I’m originally from Cottonwood, Alabama, which is just right outside of Dothan, where I live now. I graduated from Troy University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology-Biomedical Sciences. I worked in healthcare for a few years before I came to HudsonAlpha where I am the lab manager at HudsonAlpha Wiregrass.
Sarah: What do you do as the Wiregrass lab manager?
Abby: I do a little bit of everything. The big picture is that I manage the ins and outs of the lab. I work as an extension of the Clevenger lab from Huntsville, and we have two main projects here in the Wiregrass: the peanut project and the ADECA timber project. So a lot of times, I’m dealing with stuff from that, but we also get peanut samples from collaborators and customers of things that we’re working on outside of our project work. My main job is to make sure everything runs smoothly daily.
Sarah: What does a typical workday look like for you?
Abby: On Mondays, we usually have a lot of meetings, and I catch up on managerial tasks. For the rest of the week, we pretty much do lab work. Until our lab at the Wiregrass Innovation Center is complete, I am working out of a biology lab at the Houston County Career Academy. William Hudson, a research associate in the lab, and I spend a lot of time each week processing samples and extracting DNA from them. This week, we got some pine samples in for the TIMBER project and some seed samples from another collaborator that we’re processing and preparing for sequencing. My day usually just depends on what projects are going on.
Sarah: What is the Wiregrass Peanut Project?
Abby: It is a student-led peanut breeding program led by Dr. Josh Clevenger and HudsonAlpha Educational Outreach in Wiregrass-area high schools. As far as we know, it’s the only one in the world. It’s a really exciting and cool project, and the students seem to love it. We’re essentially planting peanut plants, getting genomic information from those plants, looking at the genomic information for beneficial traits like disease resistance, and seeing how that could benefit farmers here in the Wiregrass region. The students are actually the ones getting the data back and using that data to make the crossing decisions for our future breeding product processes. It’s a lot of high-level science work for these high-school students, who are historically not involved in this type of hands-on, real-world science. But, with this project, they always seem so involved and engrossed in it, and it’s so exciting to see them enjoying science.
Sarah: Why is the Wiregrass Peanut Project so important to the Wiregrass region but also the global peanut industry?
Abby: Down here in the Wiregrass, we’re very agriculturally driven. Peanuts are one of our biggest crops. A lot of farmers are growing peanuts, and we want to help them. So we’re aware of certain diseases that affect peanuts more down here, but we also are aware of diseases that affect peanuts worldwide. This project will not only benefit farmers here, but it’s a possibility to benefit farmers worldwide, especially in Africa and other countries that rely on peanuts as a major commodity. It’s just very exciting to be part of a project that is having a worldwide impact.
Sarah: Another big project you help support is the ADECA-funded TIMBER project. Can you explain that project and why it is important for Alabama?
Abby: The forestry industry is actually the number one industry in the state of Alabama. I think it brings in several billion dollars a year. There are a lot of growers and there are a lot of industries that are involved in forestry. Unlike row crops, trees don’t have a whole lot of genomic information available. There are some that do you know, they’re definitely universities working on it, and it’s just got such a large genome, it’s kind of hard to work with.
Pine trees are one of the main types of trees grown in Alabama. The TIMBER project is trying to bring genomic resources to the pine industry. That type of information is really beneficial because we’re going to be able to kind of use it as a layering tool for trait mapping and asking questions like: Does this trait produce a better tree? Will this trait make it more dense? Or is there a trait for diseases in Pine, kind of like we have in row crops? With this type of information, groups at every stage of the tree lifecycle can make better decisions about their product. Trees take 25 to 40 years to grow, so using genomic tools to make decisions earlier in the tree’s life will be a money and time saver across the board.
Personally, for me it has been interesting learning how to extract quality DNA from pine needles. It was definitely a lot of trial and error for a few months.
Sarah: I heard some exciting news about your educational future. Can you share that with me?
Abby: I applied for the plant breeding genetics and genomics PhD program at the University of Georgia, and I have been accepted! I’m very excited to start but also very nervous since I haven’t been to school in a long time. I enjoy school, so I’ll probably enjoy going back.
Sarah: What made you decide to pursue an advanced degree in plant genetics?
Abby: I was working in human health before this. I’ve always really wanted to help people and care for people. It just worked out that I did not enjoy medicine. It was just not what I wanted to do; it wasn’t my calling. Then I started this job with plants, and I realized I could do the same thing. It was just in a different form of helping. The drive and the passion that the Clevenger lab has really pushed me forward to make this decision. They also helped me see that this field is also helping people; it’s just food security and crop improvement. You’re helping people right here next to you, and you’re also helping people across the world. It just feels like a good quality thing to be doing, and that’s what pushed me. I also wanted to be able to feel more confident in my job as a scientist, so I felt like this would help push me there as well.
Sarah: This question will likely be very different next year when you’re in graduate school, but what do you do in your free time?
Abby: I do live close to my family, so I spend a lot of time with them. I usually see them at least once a week. Most of my friends are really close, so I love going out with my girlfriends. I also spend a lot of time with my dog, and she’s around here somewhere, but I don’t know where. (Update: Abby’s dog did pop into the interview, and I can confirm that she is adorable.) I also enjoy going on trips, and I love to read.