Recognizing Plant Cell authors: Justine Sucher

Justine Sucher, first author of Phylotranscriptomics of the Pentapetalae reveals frequent regulatory variation in local plant responses to the fungal pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum

Current Position: Post-doctoral Fellow in Syngenta

Education: PhD in molecular biology at UZH (Zürich University), Zürich, Switzerland; MSc in plant biotechnology at Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

Non-scientific interests: travelling and discovering new cultures, gastronomy, cooking and sport (fitness, running, …)

Brief bio: During my MSc studies, at the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, I performed internships in international laboratories, such as CSIRO or John Innes Center. By working on various projects involving resistance genes mapping in cereals, I started my plant pathology and molecular biology specialization.

In 2012, I joined the group of Pr. Beat Keller at the UZH in Zurich, as PhD student and I worked on the functional transfer of the Lr34 wheat resistance gene in other high agronomical interest cereals like rice and maize. In addition to my molecular biology and plant pathology expertise, I acquired bioinformatic knowledges by performing transcriptomic analysis of Lr34 wheat plant vs non-Lr34 wheat plant infected and non-infected.

In 2017, I pursued the development of my computational skills, by working on large data set analysis regarding the understanding of the conserved vs. specific plants response to fungal pathogen, in the group of Dr. Sylvain Raffaele, in the laboratory of plant-microbe interaction (LIPM), INRA, France. This successful project resulted in this The Plant Cell publication.

Currently, I am post-doctoral researcher in Syngenta Crop protection, Switzerland where my work focus on the study of fungal resistance to diverse active ingredients, fungicides, under development.