Recognizing Plant Cell first authors: Nischal Karki

Nischal Karki, first author of Metabolically distinct pools of phosphatidylcholine are involved in trafficking of fatty acids out of and into the chloroplast for membrane production

Current Position: Graduate Student, Chemistry, Southern Methodist University

Education: B.S. in Biochemistry, University of Southern Mississippi

Non-scientific Interests: Video games, Binging TVs, and fantasy fiction

Brief Bio: I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry from the University of Southern Mississippi with American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology certification. During my undergraduate studies, I was an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Philip Bates’s plant lipid metabolism lab. My time in the lab was spent on multiple projects including understanding bottlenecks in triacylglycerol biosynthesis in transgenic Arabidopsis engineered to make unusual fatty acids which we published in Plant Direct in 2018. I also worked on elucidating the pathways involved in the flux of fatty acid in and out of chloroplast through lipid metabolic labeling on various Arabidopsis mutants which is the subject of the current The Plant Cell paper. I currently am enrolled in PhD program in Southern Methodist University working with Dr. Brian Zoltowski. The research interest of my program is studying photoactive proteins found in almost all organisms and its role in the regulation of circadian clocks, and magnetoreception. I work with spectroscopic characterization of these proteins and modeling how they would function in biological settings.

我在南密西西比大学获得了本科学位，并获得了American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology生物化学学士学位。本科学习期间，我在Philip Bates博士的实验室参与植物脂质代谢工作，主要研究转基因拟南芥中三酰甘油酯生物合成，该转基因拟南芥生产非常规脂肪酸。我还致力于阐明与脂肪酸流入和流出质体（即叶绿体）有关的途径。我目前在南方卫理公会大学的Brian Zoltowski博士课题组攻读博士学位。我的兴趣是研究几乎所有生物体中发现的光敏蛋白及其在昼夜节律和磁感受调节中的作用。我将对这些蛋白质进行光谱表征，并对它们在生物学环境中的功能进行建模。