Assistant Professor in the Plant Stress Resilience Group. First Gen. He/Him.

My research has been motivated by a fundamental question: how does the environment shape the onset of new transcriptional programs in plants? Due to their sessile nature, plants developed special strategies to timely respond and acclimate to a dynamic and changing environment. When encountering stressful conditions, plants have the capability to undergo a complete transcriptional reprogramming event to adjust their metabolism, growth, and development to acclimate and survive through environmental challenges. 

Chromatin dynamics for a dynamic environment

Characterization of the complex network of interactions among transcription factors (TFs) and their target genes proves to be an important step in the characterization of transcriptional programs. Though critical, this approach alone is insufficient to fully describe the process of transcriptional reprogramming. TF function is tied to their ability to bind to accessible binding sites in the chromatin. This accessibility, in turn, is dependent upon the chromatin state of the cell, which dictates how much information of the genome is available for regulation.

In a dynamic environment, plants must possess mechanisms to remodel their chromatin states, establishing new accessible genomic regions while restricting others. My group focuses on understanding how environmental factors shape plant responses through the lens of chromatin organization.

Deciphering the cis-regulatory code of plant environmental responses

Once these genomic regions become accessible, they function as critical hubs for the recruitment of TFs which directly modulate gene activity in response to environmental cues. My group will focus in identifying and deciphering the cis-regulatory code that defines the function of cis-regulatory modules (CRMs). These regions could be target for modification for quantitatively fine-tuning plant responses to the environment.

My group focuses in using functional genomics and bioinformatics, to study how the environment shapes plant responses. We hope that these studies will further assist in establishing principles for engineering crop stress resilience to address the current needs in agriculture and food security.