Recognizing Plant Direct authors: James Patrick Santiago

James Patrick Santiago, first author of Phaseolus vulgaris SUT1.1 is a high affinity sucrose-proton co-transporter

Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Associate at Plant Resilience Institute and Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University (USA)

Education:

B.S. Agriculture – University of the Philippines – Los Baños

M.S. Horticulture – University of Maine (USA)

Ph.D. Molecular Plant Sciences – Washington State University (USA)

Non-scientific Interests: reading novels (thriller, horror, and historical fiction), watercolor painting, and hiking

Brief bio: Since my undergraduate years I have been interested in agriculture and plant physiology. My passion for research started when I did my undergraduate thesis on optimizing the balance and type of cytokinin and auxin in plant tissue culture media to improve total alkaloid production in callus cultures of the tropical vegetable bitter gourd. Since then, I’ve decided to pursue a career in research and decided to go to grad school. At present, my research is focused on how central carbon, nitrogen, and micronutrient metabolism and transport are affected by heat stress in plant reproductive tissues. To determine how these processes can help confer heat tolerance, I perform comparative physiological, biochemical, and molecular analyses using heat-tolerant and sensitive common beans genotypes.