Recognizing Plant Physiology authors: Matías Beltramino

Matías Beltramino, first author of ARF2 represses expression of plant GRF transcription factors in a complementary mechanism to microRNA miR396

Current Position: Postdoctoral fellow at RNA Biology lab, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Rosario (IBR-CONICET)

Education: PhD in Biological Science and BS in Biotechnology, both from the National University of Rosario

Non-scientific Interests: Acrobatics, theatre, dancing and bread baking

Brief Bio: During my undergraduate studies at National University of Rosario I became interested in plant development and biotechnology. That is why, when I saw the opportunity to join Javier Palatnik´s lab at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Rosario, I decided to pursue a PhD degree under his direction. We aimed to to understand the mechanisms underlying plant growth through the regulatory network of microRNA miR396 and the GROWTH REGULATING FACTORS (GRFs), for which I generated and characterized plants with different levels of miR396 and GRFs. In this work published in Plant Physiology, we investigated target site variation of miR396 in eudicots and found a switch in the regulatory mechanisms of GRFs at transcriptional and post-transcriptional level.