Fabiola Muro-Villanueva: Plant Physiology First Author

Fabiola Muro-Villanueva, first author of “H-lignin can be deposited independently of CINNAMYL ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE C and D in Arabidopsis”

Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Purdue University

Education: 

Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Purdue University

B.S. in Biochemistry and B.S. in Genetics, New Mexico State University

Non-scientific Interests: cooking, running, barre, traveling

Brief bio:

I grew up on a farm, which exposed me to agriculture from an early age and sparked my interest in plants and how they function. As an undergraduate student, I had the opportunity to do research in the lab of Dr. Champa Sengupta-Gopalan at New Mexico State University. During my time in her lab, I studied the effect of increasing sucrose content on nitrogen fixation in alfalfa. I then pursued a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Purdue University under the mentorship of Dr. Clint Chapple. My thesis work initially focused on incorporating novel lignin monomers into plant cell walls through genetic engineering, but I soon became interested in understanding why many of these efforts resulted in plant dwarfism. Understanding the link between lignin content and composition and plant dwarfism became the main focus of my thesis, and it is the work I am currently concluding as a postdoc.