Recognizing Plant Cell first authors: Rosa Micol-Ponce

Rosa Micol-Ponce, first author of Arabidopsis RIBOSOMAL RNA PROCESSING 7 is required for 18S rRNA maturation

Name: Rosa Micol-Ponce

Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Biology and Geology, University of Almería, Almería, Spain.

Education: BS in Biology, University of Alicante (Spain). MS and PhD in Bioengineering, University Miguel Hernández (UMH), Elche (Spain).

Non-scientific Interests: Travelling, tennis, swimming, mountain hiking, photography and astronomy.

Brief bio: After graduation, I joined the group of Prof. María Rosa Ponce at UMH. During my period as a doctoral student, I participated in a large-scale screening for suppressors of the morphological phenotype of a viable and hypomorphic allele of the ARGONAUTE1 gene, which encodes the central component of the microRNA pathway in Arabidopsis. Several mutants that I isolated allowed to open new lines of research, one of which is related to an important aspect of RNA metabolism: rRNA maturation by ribosome biogenesis factors (RBFs). I studied two Arabidopsis RBFs, which are homologs of yeast Ribosomal RNA processing 7 (Rrp7) and Nucleolar protein 53 (Nop53), and found both evolutionarily conserved and divergent functions of these RBFs. After getting my PhD degree, I decided to complete my education as a plant geneticist by studying a crop species, and joined the laboratory of Prof. Rafael Lozano at the University of Almería, where I am characterizing genes required for body architecture, floral transition, and flower and fruit development in Solanum lycopersicum.