Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: François Lefèvre

François Lefèvre, first author of Towards the identification of substrates of ABC transporters

Current position: BAEF (Belgian American Educational Foundation) postdoctoral fellow at the Boyce Thompson Institute of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

Education: PhD in Biochemistry at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Non-scientific interests: (Trail) running, mountaineering, family & friends

Brief bio: During my Master’s degree I developed a growing interest in membrane proteins, which account for one third of the genes in living organisms but are still poorly characterized. In 2013 I therefore joined the lab of Dr. Marc Boutry at the Louvain Institute of Biomolecular Science and Technology to work on the biochemical characterization of ABC transporters from the model plants Nicotiana tabacum (NtPDR3) and Petunia hybrida (PhABCG1). Thanks to fruitful collaborations with colleagues from Spain, The Netherlands and the United States we were able to achieve the challenging task of identifying the actual substrates transported by these proteins.

As a postdoc in the group of Dr. Maria Harrison at Cornell University I am currently developing a methodology to identify fungal transporters involved in the development and maintenance of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis.