Recognizing The Plant Cell author Mauricio Contreras

Mauricio Contreras, first author of Host-interactor screens of Phytophthora infestans RXLR proteins reveal vesicle trafficking as a major effector-targeted process

Current Position: PhD Student at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK.

Education: BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Non-scientific interests: Most of my free time is spent listening to music, talking about music, thinking about music or actually making music. Otherwise, I’m really into photography, and video art.

Brief bio:

Plant-microbe interactions caught my interest early on in my studies. As an undergraduate student I was very lucky to have one of my Professors, Maria E. Segretín, encourage me to join her group at INGEBI-CONICET in Buenos Aires. As part of my bachelors’ thesis, we attempted to use transplastomic approaches to develop broad-spectrum antimicrobial resistance in plants. After getting my BSc, I moved to London for an internship with Tolga Bozkurt at Imperial College, where I studied the roles of plant selective autophagy during infection. Dr. Segretín and Dr. Bozkurt were both great mentors and my experiences in their labs convinced me to pursue a career in MPMI, at which point I joined the Kamoun group at The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) in Norwich. After a year-long internship there, I started a PhD with Prof. Kamoun, studying how pathogen effectors can compromise signalling of NLR immune networks during infection. Currently, I couldn’t be happier! My PI and fellow lab members are truly a gift and working with them makes going to the lab every day a fantastic experience. I’m looking forward to making more scientific discoveries alongside them