Alum’s Jewish Museu Cassie Sacotte just spent the weekend in a circus tent in the name of art. Surrounded by hula-hooping lessons and face-painting, dancing lessons and balloon animals, Sacotte was in her element as the special programs and events coordinator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The event was the “Big Top Chagall Shebang,” a circus-themed afternoon to celebrate the Museum’s current exhibit, “Chagall’s ‘Le Cirque.’”
After rhizobia bacteria colonize the roots of a legume, they create these root nodules. (UWM Photo/ Pete Amland)
Sustainable agriculture
“It was a great time. Everybody seemed really happy, which is what I was concerned with,” Sacotte said with a laugh. That’s her job: Create programming for the museum that will draw the Milwaukee community to the museum and keep them interested and learning once they arrive.
Prasad inoculated rice with rhizobia and found that the bacteria can, indeed, get into the rice plant using the same pathway that mycorrhizae do. And once inside the rice plant, rhizobia enhanced hormone growth in the same way these bacteria do in legumes. But some obstacles remained: The rhizobia microbes didn’t get inside the root cells in rice, as they do with legumes, and they didn’t stimulate the rice plant to make root nodules. “If we can get them inside the cell in rice,” Prasad says, “that will be the breakthrough. But it’s tricky. We’re trying to accomplish something that evolution has not.” His work toward that continues, encouraged by more clues from the rice-rhizobia interactions. When rhizobia use the mycorrhizae pathway, changes occur in the instructions delivered by the fungal interaction genes that are involved in messaging. These changes signal that activity is happening that wouldn’t without the bacteria’s presence. Prasad wonders if this could reveal the communication process between legumes and microbes. Prasad knows there are many approaches with potential to solve the nitrogen-fixing mystery. Other scientists are trying strategies like gene editing, which could bypass the need to figure out rhizobia’s secrets. Still, he believes that understanding the actual biology is important because of what else it might tell you. “There are many steps that need to happen before it can fix nitrogen,” Prasad says, “So, to find the answer, you follow where the basic science takes you.” By Laura Otto, University Relations 8 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
Art History and Jewish Studies alumna Cassie Sacotte is the special programs and events coordinator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. Photo courtesy of Cassie Sacotte.
Jewish Museum Milwaukee is an organization
dedicated to telling the stories of the Jews of southeastern Wisconsin and in doing so, making connections between various communities throughout their own histories. The museum hosts three to four exhibitions each year, and Sacotte is responsible for creating additional programming and events around those exhibits to help visitors connect with the information. It’s the perfect job for a woman who double-majored in art history and Jewish studies. Sacotte graduated from UWM with her Bachelor’s degree in 2010. She was drawn to the majors for the same reason she was drawn to UWM: There was nothing like it in the small town where she grew up.
