Kumud Saini: Plant Physiology First Author
Kumud Saini, first author of “High temperature restricts cell division and leaf size by coordination of PIF4 and TCP4 transcription factors”
Current position: Research Associate, Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, UK
Education: MSc. Plant Biology and Biotechnology, University of Hyderabad, India; Ph.D. Biology, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Non-scientific interests: Oil portraits, Hiking, CrossFit
Brief: I am passionate about studying organ size regulation and how plants show growth plasticity. Since plant cells are immobile they achieve this plasticity at the local cell level via changes in cell division or expansion processes. During my postdoc with Dr. Aashish Ranjan at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), India, I started to link environmental signals to core developmental pathways in plants. I got interested in studying the effects of high temperature on plant growth.
Currently, at SLCU, I’m investigating how mechanical stresses arising from cell growth affect leaf morphogenesis under warm growth temperatures.
Other than doing science, I like to maintain an active lifestyle or sometimes wind down by making oil portraits for long hours to keep balance in my life.
