Bae Young Choi: The Plant Cell First Author

Bae Young Choi, co-first author of “The Chlamydomonas bZIP transcription factor BLZ8 confers oxidative stress tolerance by inducing the carbon-concentrating mechanism”

Current position: Ph.D. student at the Laboratory of Plant Cell Biology, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea

Education: B.S. in Bioengineering and Biomedical Science, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea

Non-scientific interests: hiking, riding a bicycle, skiing, and swimming

Bio: I was born and raised in Seoul, a mega-size city, but I spent lots of time in the countryside helping in my grandfather’s farm, which probably awakened my naturalist instinct. Then I learned from books and mass media that the Nature was endangered by environmental pollutions and global warming, and began to think of studying science so that I can contribute to recovery of Nature. During my bachelor degree program, I studied synthetic biology and metabolic engineering in Prof. Sung Kuk Lee’s lab to improve the efficiency of lignocellulosic biomass biorefinery, believing that sustainable biorefinery would have sufficient potential to replace petroleum refinery. After graduation, I joined the laboratory of Plant Cell Biology, headed by Prof. Youngsook Lee, to study microalgae, since I thought that, to realize industrialization of biorefinery, the increase in biorefinery efficiency alone was not sufficient, but the production of source material might be even more important. My Ph.D. thesis is on the identification of transcription factors involved in stress responses and lipid production in microalgae for improving the production of microalgal biomass and biofuel. I strongly believe that microalgae-based biotechnology would be one of the most promising solutions for alleviating global climate change! ​