Andrea Mair: Plant Physiology First Author

Andrea Mair, first author of “Advances in enzyme-mediated proximity labeling and its potential for plant research”

Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher in the Bergmann lab at Stanford

Education: Diploma studies (equivalent to MSc) in Molecular Biology, University of Vienna, Austria; PhD in Molecular Biology, University of Vienna, Austria

Non-scientific Interests: Karate, hiking, gardening

Brief bio: I grew up in Austria with a dad who loves plants and gardening and (much to my mom’s dismay) likes to plant all kinds of seeds he finds. So, when I studied Molecular Biology at the University of Vienna as an undergrad, I was not, like most of my cohort, drawn to molecular medicine or immunology, but rather found myself wanting to study plants and their molecular mechanisms. After rotating through most of the plant genetics and biochemistry labs at the Max F. Perutz laboratories, I decided to do my diploma thesis in the lab of Markus Teige, studying plant protein kinases. I got hooked and ended up staying for my PhD thesis, expanding my project to investigate the connection between SnRK1 kinases and C/S1 group bZIP transcription factors in the energy deprivation response of Arabidopsis. After receiving my PhD in Molecular Biology, I moved to California to join Dominique Bergmann’s lab at Stanford as a postdoc to study transcription factor complexes in the stomatal lineage and was fortunate to be allowed to adapt TurboID for efficient proximity labeling in plants. I am interested in how alternative protein complex formation determines protein specificity of closely related proteins and to what extent protein partners are conserved across the plant kingdom.