Spain
April 13, 2023
 

The three new AGenT postdoctoral researchers.
 

Three young postdoctoral researchers coming from Spain and Italy join the centre to conduct multidisciplinary and intersectoral research projects at CRAG. They have been selected in the second call of the AGenT (Agricultural Genomics Transversal) training programme, an ambitious initiative funded by the competitive H2020-MSCA-COFUND 2019 Call designed to conduct research projects in collaboration with partner organizations.

Committed to transforming the outcomes of its cutting-edge research into benefits for society, the research projects will help to advance scientific topics of high social relevance that are crucial for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. CRAG offers a supportive and inspiring environment for fellows to enhance their training both in specific research fields and in transferable and transversal skills, to foster secondments and research partnerships, and to establish valuable networks in the academic and the industrial sectors.

These are the new AGenT postdoctoral fellows and their research project lines:

• Lucia Campos (Spain) is studying transposable elements (TE) dynamics in the evolution of tetraploid cotton species. She’s interested in understanding the role of TE activity in the domestication of cotton, as well as how their allopolyploidisation event impacted TE activity and shaped the evolutionary trajectory of these species.
• Marti Quevedo (Spain) is interested in how nuclear architecture plays a role in plant development and stress responses. He studies how chromatin loops influence transcription during high light stress and how cis-regulatory DNA elements can be targeted to generate photoprotection traits in crops.
• Alessandro Silvestri  (Italy) investigates whether molecular reprogramming, resulting from the suppression of RNA silencing at a cell-type-specific level in plants, can lead to the transmission of mobile RNAs to neighboring and distal cell types. The goal is to understand whether such transmission of RNAs can enhance the plant's defense against pathogen threats.

Website: http://www.cragenomica.es

Published: April 13, 2023