Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors, December 2015

Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here are the first-author profiles from December’s issue of The Plant Cell.

Hyo-Jun Lee, featured first author of Systemic Immunity Requires SnRK2.8-Mediated Nuclear Import of NPR1 in Arabidopsis

Current Position: Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.00371Lee

Education: PhD in Biochemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

Non-scientific Interests: History (Age of Discovery), Playing traditional Korean instruments.

When I was an undergraduate student at Seoul National University, I was interested in discovering something that nature has made, rather than developing tools or reactions. In my department, Professor Park has been studying how plants developed molecular mechanisms to cope with a changing environment. I decided to participate in the internship program offered by his laboratory. During the internship, I met Arabidopsis and was fascinated by the fact that this little plant regulates its genes and proteins in a very smart and accurate manner in response to environmental conditions. After graduation, I started my PhD study in his laboratory and searched for biotic and abiotic stress-related genes. I identified several genes that are important for ambient temperature response and systemic acquired resistance. I am now working on these two main themes to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms. While several molecular events have been characterized, there are still more mechanisms to be determined in regulating plant responses to temperature changes and disease resistance. I hope my research contributes to understanding how plants interact with the environment in nature.

 

Anne Kriegel, featured first author of Job Sharing in the Endomembrane System: Vacuolar Acidification Requires the Combined Activity of V-ATPase and V-PPase00733Kriegel

Current Position: Researcher (until Sept. 2015), Plant Developmental Biology group, Centre for Organismal Studies (COS), Heidelberg University, Germany.

Education: University Diploma in Agricultural Biology (Hohenheim University, Stuttgart, Germany), PhD in Plant Developmental Biology group (Centre for Organismal Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany).

Non-scientific Interests: Hiking, aerobics, languages.

Since school age I have been fascinated by the beauty of plants and their seeming intelligence to deal with certain conditions. Thus, I decided to study Agricultural Biology at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. I specialized in Agricultural Biotechnology with majors in molecular biology, biotechnology, molecular plant nutrition and plant physiology. During my studies I gained practical experience in research institutes in England as well as in Brazil. Here I got insights into exciting research on sulfate transporters in wheat and worked on genes responding to pathogen infection in cocoa. After I finished my diploma thesis in the molecular plant nutrition lab of Prof. Nico von Wirén, I moved to Heidelberg University to Prof. Karin Schumacher’s laboratory to do my PhD. During my research project I worked on two proton pumps, the V-ATPase and the V-PPase, and found that both enzymes are required for acidification of the central vacuole. This essential process is the basis of plant growth, solute transport and detoxification of the cytosol.

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