Jorge El-Azaz: Plant Physiology First Author

Jorge El-Azaz, first author of “Deregulation of phenylalanine biosynthesis evolved with the emergence of vascular plants”

Current Position: Postdoctoral scientist at Hiroshi Maeda’s Lab, UW-Madison

Education: Major in Biology (University of Málaga, Andalusia, Spain). Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Francisco M. Cánova’s lab. (University of Málaga, Andalusia, Spain).

Non-scientific Interests: music, gardening, history, photography, outdoor and nature activities.

Brief bio: I got my Ph.D. in 2017 at the laboratory of Francisco M. Cánovas’ (Universidad de Málaga). After graduating, I stayed in the same lab as a post-doc for one extra year, working on various projects that were derived from my thesis. A very significant part of the results from this period of my career are now going to be happily published in Plant Physiology as the manuscript entitled “Deregulation of phenylalanine biosynthesis evolved with the emergence of vascular plants”. In November of 2019, I moved to the laboratory of Professor Hiroshi Maeda at UW-Madison, in which I am engaged in the study of the shikimate and lignin pathways of grasses. My main scientific interests are focused on the evolution of plant metabolism across different plant lineages, and more specifically on the metabolism of amino acids and the multiple specialized compounds that are synthesized from them.