Recognizing Plant Direct first authors: Anahit Galstyan

Anahit Galstyan, first author of Auxin promotion of seedling growth via ARF5 is dependent on the brassinosteroid-regulated transcription factors BES1 and BEH4

Current Position: Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany

Education: B.Sc. – Armenian National Agricultural University, Armenia; M.Sc. – Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Greece; Ph.D. – Center for Research in Agricultural Research, Spain

Non-scientific Interests: traveling, enjoying nature with family and experimenting with new cooking recipes

Brief bio: I am a plant geneticist, fascinated by dynamic gene regulatory networks underlying developmental plasticity. During my second year of undergraduate studies in Armenia, I took plant genetics course taught by Prof. Grigoryan who truly inspired me and seeded the curiosity towards plants. Since then, I had the privilege to work with many exceptional scientist and pursue my curiosity to understand how plants grow. During my Ph.D. in Dr. Jaime Martinez-Garcia’s lab (CRAG, Barcelona, Spain), I studied one of the beautiful examples in plant developmental plasticity – shade avoidance syndrome. In 2011, I joined Dr. Jennifer Nemhauser’s lab (UW, Seattle, USA) for my first postdoctoral position, where I investigated interacting hormone (auxin and brassinosteroids) signaling networks in the context of photomorphogenesis. We are very glad that this work has been recently published in Plant Direct. Currently, I am an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Angela Hay’s lab (MPIPZ, Cologne, Germany). I study the evolutionary changes in gene regulatory networks that gave rise to morphological innovations in seed dispersal strategies.