Oxidative Stress Signalling

Jonas De Backer graduated in 2019 as Master of Bioscience Engineering: Cell and Gene Biotechnology (Bio-engineer) at the faculty of Bioscience Engineering at Ghent University. During his master thesis under the guidance of Prof. Monica Höfte and Dr. Inge De Clercq at the Oxidative Stress Signaling group of Prof. Van Breusegem, he was involved in the study of the post-translational activation of transcription factors involved in retrograde signaling of plant stress responses. On the 1st of January 2020, he started his PhD in the EOS project Retrograde Arabidopsis Chlamydomonas Thiol signaling (ReACTs) to further study this topic while applying for an FWO predoctoral fellowship for fundamental research which he obtained that same year. Now he is doing his joint PhD entitled “Identification of proteases that activate membrane-bound transcription factors during mitochondrial retrograde regulation“ in the inter-organellar signaling lab of Prof. De Clercq in collaboration with the lab of Prof. Monica Höfte (Lab of Phytopathology, Ghent University) and the lab of Prof. Frank Van Breusegem (Lab of Oxidative Stress Signaling, PSB VIB-UGent).

Carmen Castell obtained her Biology Degree at the University of Seville, where she joined the lab of Dr. Navarro and Prof. Hervás at the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis (CSIC-US). Subsequently, she obtained a Collaboration Scholarship from the Spanish Government and conducted her Master´s degree in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology at the University of Seville. With various competitive national scholarships, she completed her PhD thesis focusing on the improvement of productivity of the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum under stress conditions by using different biotechnological approaches. Currently, she has joined Prof. Van Breusegem´s group (Oxidative Stress Signaling group) as a postdoctoral researcher.