Cell Wall Engineering Group (Continued)
Aymerick Eudes
Aymerick is a project scientist in the Cell Wall Engineering team. He received his PhD in plant cellular and molecular physiology at the University of Paris XI / INRA Versailles (France) where he characterized key genes involved in lignin biosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana. During his postdoctoral studies at the University of Florida (Horticultural Sciences), he investigated the metabolism of folate and identified genes involved in the transport of B-vitamins in plants and bacteria. At JBEI, his research is focused on the development and validation of new engineering strategies to modify lignin biochemical and biophysical properties in order reduce plant cell wall recalcitrance to enzymatic degradation without affecting plant development.
Wint Wah Lwin
Wint graduated with Bioengineering degree from University of California, San Diego. She worked as a Research Assistant in the Bioengineering department and later as a Staff Research Associate at the Stein Clinical Research Institute in the UCSD School of Medicine. She is currently utilizing her skills in molecular biology and bioengineering to develop new biological devices for plant engineering. Her current focus is on the development of synthetic biology tools to improve spacio-temporal expression of gene in plants. These tools will have an important role to optimize the reconfiguration of the secondary cell wall regulatory network and other biological networks as well as to engineer lignin biochemical and biophysical properties. Her key motivations are to develop new tool for genetic engineering and to support the development of energy crops for sustainable bioenergy production.
JinSun Kim
Jin Sun graduated in 2006 at Chonnam National University (CNU) on Horticulture in Korea. Her research project is attempting to develop plants that produce and incorporate into the lignin new monomers that will make it less recalcitrant. She is also developing approaches to reduce lignin content without altering plant development. Finally, she is running lignin and polysaccharide analysis of cell wall engineered lines.
Prajakta Mitra
Prajakta graduated with a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Georgia State University in 2007. Her research in the Cell Wall Engineering group is focused on generation of strategies for de novo synthesis of novel lignin monomers in Arabidopsis thaliana stems. Her primary focus is on the engineering of biosynthetic pathways for the production of monomers that will render lignin more easily cleavable. She developed a method to monitor in planta the activity of engineered metabolic pathways in order to optimize them. Finally, she also has a strong expertise in microscopy and cell wall polymer staining.
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Hugo Vargas
Hugo completed his B.S. degree in Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley in 2010. His major interest is being part of scientific researches focusing on sustainability to protect life, environment and Earth. Finally, he would like to go back to school to do an M.D in Biology. In the Cell Wall Engineering group, Hugo is supporting the entire team by growing plants, performing screens, harvesting seeds, collecting tissues for saccharification assays.
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Fan Yang
Fan graduated in 2007 at University of California, Riverside on plant cell biology. Her research in the Cell Wall Engineering group is focused on isolating and characterization of plant monolignol transporters. She developed a yeast screening approach and indentified several candidate transporters. She is currently characterizing the physiological function in plants and verifying their implication cell wall lignification. She is also developing and testing approaches to improve spacio-temporal control of the three main secondary cell wall components (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) in order to reduce lignin content and increase polysaccharide deposition without impacting plant development.
Kejian Zheng
Kejian completed his M.S. degree in 2003 at China agricultural university on biochemistry and molecular biology. His interests are on developing energy crops with low lignin recalcitrance and high content in carbohydrate content. In the Cell Wall Engineering group, Kejian is developing various plant transformation vectors for plant engineering and already developed a series of vector for secondary cell wall modifications in various plant species. He is also supporting the teams working on lignin engineering, on the reconfiguration of the secondary cell wall regulatory network and on the characterization of monolignol exporters. He is testing strategies to improve biomass energy content and plant stress tolerance.
