Recognizing Plant Cell authors: Margot Bezrutczyk

Margot Bezrutczyk, first author of Evidence for phloem loading via the abaxial bundle sheath cells in maize leaves

Current Position:  PhD Student at Heinrich Heine University

Education: BS in Neural Science from NYU, MS in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego

Non-scientific Interests:  gardening and native plant landscaping, sailing, running

Brief bio: I fell in love with plants while volunteering at an organic farm while I finished my MS in Neuroscience, and I’ve never looked back. I wanted to generate knowledge that would lead to more resilient crops, so I joined the lab of Wolf B. Frommer at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, where I helped characterize a new family of sugar transporters in maize. When the Frommer lab moved to Duesseldorf, Germany I moved with them to pursue a PhD, during which I explored the mechanisms by which pathogens elicit sugar from their host plants by ‘hijacking’ sugar transporter expression. Later, I focused on the mechanism of phloem loading in maize. In 2021, I will be returning to the US to begin work as a postdoc at the Joint Genome Institute, where I will study plant-root endosymbiont interactions.