Rojas Murcia Nelson

Biography

Nelson has a bachelor’s degree in Agronomic Engineering. To pursue his interest in fundamental biology, he left his original Colombia to move to Switzerland where he then completed an MSc in molecular life sciences at the University of Lausanne. After a short master’s project in the Geldner’s lab, working in the characterization of proteins involved in the establishment of the Casparian strip in Arabidopsis, he went downstairs in UNIL’s Biophore building to work in microbiology. There, he focused his project to understand how the multidomain, large-size proteins named non-ribosomal peptide synthetases are able to produce small non-ribosomal peptides in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These peptides usually display biologically activity and some of them are used as antibiotics and as agents to treat cancer, yet how they are synthesized is not fully understood. After several experiments involving protein radio-labeling and mass spectrometry Nelson decided to come back to work in Arabidopsis to deploy biochemistry along with in vivo experiments to understand how lignin is produced in the Casparian strip.

Research Interest

Polarly localized kinase SGN1 is required for Casparian strip integrity and positioning. Nature plants.