Recognizing The Plant Cell author Noemí Ruiz-Lopez

Noemí Ruiz-Lopez, co-first author of Synaptotagmins at the endoplasmic reticulum–plasma membrane contact sites maintain diacylglycerol homeostasis during abiotic stress 

Current Position: Associate Professor at the University of Málaga.

Education: PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology, B.S. in Biology at the University of Seville, Spain.

Non‐scientific Interests: Spending time with my son and my husband (they are fun!), hiking, reading books and growing roses and orchids.

Brief bio: I have always loved plants. For that reason, after I finished my B.S, I did my PhD under the supervision of Prof. R. Garcés and Prof. E. Martínez-Force, studying triacylglycerol biosynthesis in sunflower. Since then, I have loved plant lipids. In 2007, I joint the lab of Prof. J. Napier (Rothamsted Research, UK). I focused on the production of fish oils in plants. This was an incredibly enjoyable period in my professional life, and I am delighted with the results we got. And after two small projects working at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and at the Instituto de la Grasa, I was awarded with a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. This fellowship enabled me to spend two years working in the group of Prof. Miguel A. Botella at the University of Malaga. I focus on elucidating the roles of AtSYT1 and AtSYT3 proteins during the cold stress in A. thaliana, using the latest techniques in cell biology, protein interaction, and confocal microscopy. Now, I work as an Associate Professor at the Instituto de Hortofruticultura Subtropical y Mediterránea “La Mayora” (IHSM, UMA-CSIC). And my main objective is to decipher the molecular mechanisms of lipid transport and lipid signaling by SMP proteins (at contact sites) under abiotic stress conditions A deeper knowledge of how lipids are linked to environmental stresses is still needed.