Lisa Désirée Westrich: The Plant Cell First Author

Lisa Désirée Westrich, co-first author of “Fast and global reorganization of the chloroplast protein biogenesis network during heat acclimation”

Current Position: PhD student in the laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Eukaryotes at the Technische Universtität Kaiserslautern

Education: M. Sc. in Microbial and Plant Biotechnology and B. Sc. in Biology at the Technische Universtität Kaiserslautern

Non-scientific Interests: Bouldering, cooking and reading

Brief bio:

I became interested in chloroplast protein biogenesis during my master thesis in the laboratory of Felix Willmund. During my thesis project, I worked on heat stress induced protein aggregation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, employing protein biochemistry methods and mass spectrometry. Here I became interested in the different mechanisms a cell employs to maintain its proteostasis and how these react to changing environmental conditions. In my subsequent PhD work I continued working on different aspects of protein homeostasis, with an emphasis on chloroplast translation related processes. To this end I established a method to isolate chloroplast ribosomes and identify associated factors via mass spectrometry. I am fascinated to investigate molecular processes in detail, in order to understand how processes within a cell are intertwined and create a system that can sustain life in a dynamic environment.