Fernando Baile: The Plant Cell First Author

Fernando Baile, first author of EAR domain-containing transcription factors trigger PRC2-mediated chromatin marking in Arabidopsis

Current Position: PhD student in Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis Institute (IBVF) in Seville, University of Seville, Spain.

Education: BS in Biochemistry, MS in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology, University of Seville.

Non-scientific Interests: Traveling, reading, growing and designing bonsais, regional dances, look after my garden…

Brief bio: I have always defined myself as a plant enthusiast, so I was surrounded by plants as long as I remember. When I was studying BS, I started my way to plant Molecular Biology in Dr. Federico Valverde’s lab (IBVF), where I deepened in the role of two genes related to starch metabolism in floral induction of Arabidopsis. After that, I continued doing my research in this lab during MS. My final master project was about building an inducible system to direct starch synthesis enzymes to the chloroplast, expecting a relation between metabolism and flowering. Then, my career turned around plant Epigenetics, when I began working in Dr. Myriam Calonje’s lab (IBVF) focusing in the Polycomb Group (PcG) proteins, its repressive complexes (PRC1 and PRC2) and the epigenetic regulation of plant development. Now, I am working on my PhD, deciphering the role that different transcription factors involved in developmental processes have in recruiting these complexes for histone marking. Our next step is to go further in understanding the histone code, its implication in plant development and in stress responses.