Recognizing Plant Physiology authors: Jessica Barros

Jessica Barros, first author of Autophagy is required for lipid homeostasis during dark-induced senescence

Current Position: Post Doc, Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil

Education: PhD in Plant Physiology, Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil

Non-scientific Interests: dancing, travelling and watching comedies

Brief bio: My interest in plant physiology began during my bachelor’s studying nitrogen transporters. In 2014, I joined prof. Wagner Araujo’s lab as a master’s student to investigate the connections between autophagy and amino acid metabolism. Since then, I have been fascinated by the plant autophagy theme. In 2016, I continued my research as PhD student in the same lab to address the novel questions that arose during my master’s. One of the projects aimed to investigate whether autophagy can also affect the release of lipid substrates during starvation conditions. In 2019, I had the opportunity to join the group of Tamar Avin-Wittenberg at Hebrew University as a visitor PhD student. This experience resulted in a fruitful collaboration with a great ideas exchange which was fundamental to complete the work published here. I just finished my PhD and I am looking forward to the challenges and future discoveries ahead.