Recognizing Plant Physiology authors: María Flores-Tornero

María Flores-Tornero, first author of Transcriptomic and Proteomic Insights into Amborella trichopoda Male Gametophyte Functions

Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher in the Cell Biology and Plant Biochemistry Department, University of Regensburg

Education: BSc. in Biological Sciences, University of Valencia (2010), MSc. in Plant Molecular Biology (2011) and Ph.D in Plant Biotechnology, University of Valencia (2016)

Non-scientific Interests: traveling, sports, coffee and music

Brief bio: As a bachelor student, María oriented her career to the plant biology field. She did both MSc and PhD on plant metabolism in the group of Prof. Ros at the University of Valencia. Thanks to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), in 2014 she joined the group of Dr. Fernie at the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam to complete the experimental part of her PhD thesis and to gain practical knowledge on plant metabolomic and transcriptomic data analysis. The fertility problems observed in Arabidopsis mutants during her metabolic studies captivated her attention so much that she included basic reproductive analysis in her dissertation and decided to further explore this fascinating field as a postdoc. In May 2016 she moved to the department of Prof. Dresselhaus at the University of Regensburg to study the evolution of sexual plant reproduction. During the last four years, she has learnt how to combine specific methodologies from the reproduction field with her previous experience on “-omic” approaches. This is reflected in this paper, where transcriptomic and proteomic information on the male gametophyte of the basal angiosperm Amborella trichopoda is provided and some putative orthologs of key proteins involved in male gametophyte function are also identified. Her future goals are to contribute to a better understanding of plant gamete development and interaction to detect potential targets for applied research in plant breeding.

姓名：María Flores-Tornero

当前职位：雷根斯堡大学，细胞生物与植物生化系，博士后

教育经历：2010年本科毕业于瓦伦西亚大学生物科学专业；2011年硕士毕业于瓦伦西亚大学植物分子生物专业；2016年于瓦伦西亚大学植物生物科技专业获得博士学位。

兴趣爱好：旅游，运动，音乐和咖啡

个人简介：本科时，我就对植物生物学领域产生了兴趣，在硕士和博士期间于瓦伦西亚大学Ros教授课题组就植物代谢相关课题进行了研究。2014年，受DAAD资助，我加入了波茨坦马普研究所Fernie博士的团队，完成了博士论文的实验部分，并掌握和学习了植物代谢组学和转录组学数据分析方面的知识和技能。其中，在拟南芥突变体的代谢研究中对生殖阶段的问题产生了极大兴趣，因此决定在博士后期间对该阶段展开进一步的探究。2016年5月，我加入了雷根斯堡大学Thomas Dresselhaus 课题组研究有性植物生殖的进化。在近4年的研究中，本人学会了如何将植物生殖领域特有的研究方法与之前多组学研究的经验相结合，并应用在此次发表的论文中。本篇论文提供了早期分化的被子植物无油樟（Amborella trichopoda）的雄配子体的转录组学和蛋白质组学信息，并且对一部分推测的与雄配子体功能有关的关键蛋白的同源基因进行了鉴定。我希望将来能继续更好地研究和理解植物配子的发育和雌雄配子间的相互作用，最终发现潜在的机制用于植物育种的应用研究。