Marisa Otegui

Center for Quantitative Cell Imaging, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Talk title: Understanding the Evolution of Endosomal Sorting Mechanisms in Plants

Marisa Otegui obtained her PhD degree in University of La Plata Argentina. She did her postdoctoral training in University of Colorado-Boulder working on electron tomography imaging and plant cytokinesis. She joined University of Wisconsin Madison as an Assistant Professor of Botany in 2004. Her laboratory focuses on the mechanisms that regulate membrane and protein trafficking and degradation in plants and how they control plant development. She has combined multiple approaches to understand the degradation of cellular components through the endosomal pathway and autophagy (self-cellular eating). The Otegui lab uses both fluorescence–based imaging and transmission electron microscopy and electron tomography of high-pressure frozen cells for three-dimensional cellular analysis. She is currently working on endosomal membrane remodeling in Arabidopsis in the context of plant development and autophagy in maize to understand nutrient recycling. Besides microscopy imaging, her laboratory uses genetic, omics, molecular, and biochemical tools to manipulate gene expression and understand gene function. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in plant molecular and cell biology, organizes conference and workshops on cell imaging, and participate in the editorial board of scientific journals.