Cristina Rioja - new postdoc in regulatory networks

Cristina Rioja holds a BSc in Biology from University of Salamanca, Spain, an MSc in Biotechnology from University of Pamplona, Spain, and a PhD in Biology, from University of Salamanca, Spain. Since January 2017 she is a postdoc at DynaMo Center. 

During a postdoc at The University of Western Ontario, Cristina studied the interaction between the herbivory Spider Mite (Tetranychus urticae) and different plant species including Arabidopsis, tomato, grapevine and beans. Her main lines of investigation were two: the first one was focused on  comparing Local vs, Systemic  Arabidopsis early responses to Spider Mites; the second project was focused on comparing the different adaptation strategies to tomato as host seen in two species of Spider Mites: the specialist T.evansi and the  generalist T.urticae.

Fine-tune regulation in response to environmental challenges

Cristina explains:

“Recently, I have become fascinated on how plant transcription factors can integrate different environmental challenges and fine-tune regulate the response to individual or combined stresses”.

At the DynaMo Center, Cristina studies how individual transcription factors involved in glucosinolates signaling respond to different challenges with the aim of developing a comprehensive picture of fine-tuning regulation of glucosinolate accumulation. Cristina’s goal is to investigate the role of individual transcription factors in different environmental conditions such as sulfate starvation, hormone treatments or biotic stress in the context of glucosinolates defenses.

Welcome Cristina!