Recognizing Plant Cell authors: Cristina Castillejo Mangado

Cristina Castillejo Mangado, first author of Allelic Variation of MYB10 is the Major Force Controlling Natural Variation of Skin and Flesh Color in Strawberry (Fragaria spp.) fruit

Current Position: Research Associate at Instituto de Investigación y Formación Agraria y Pesquera de Andalucía (IFAPA)

Education: PhD in Biology at University of Malaga (2002). Bsc in Biology at University of Malaga (1997)

Non-scientific Interests: traveling, photography, music, hiking

Brief bio: I started my research career at the laboratory of Victorio Valpuesta in the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department from University of Malaga, studying enzymes involved in cell wal metabolism during strawberry fruit ripening.  After completing my PhD, I completely swiched my research focus to Arabidopsis. I got the great chance to join Prof. Soraya Pelaz at Centre de Recerca en Agrigenòmica (CRAG) in Barcelona as a postdoc. Our goal was to elucidate how plants know when to flower in response to a variety of external and endogenous signals and what genes, networks and mechanisms are responsible for the control of this process. During my second postdoctoral research I joined Dr. Estelle’s laboratory at the University of California San Diego to study the signalling cascade downstream of auxin perception leading to another crucial aspect of plant development, hypocotyl elongation.

Nowadays, I am happily back to my origins, to the town where I grew up and graduated, and to my work on strawberry improvement, since I became part of the Strawberry Genomic and Biotechnology laboratory at IFAPA Malaga lead by Jose F. Sánchez-Sevilla and Iraida Amaya. The main goal of our research group is to understand the genetic and molecular basis of different fruit quality traits as well as develop a panel of molecular markers that eventually could be used in breeding programs.