Nicolas Ernesto Figueroa Fuentealba

Postdoctoral Fellows

Location:

Building 2, Level 3, 3266-WS13

Social Profile:

Biography

Nicolás joined Stress Granule Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in April 2021. His research focuses on discovering the role of RNA methylation readers in plant stress tolerance. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Plant Biotechnology from Universidad de Concepción in Chile and his Ph.D. from the Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany, where he investigated the metabolism of abscisic acid during the strawberry ripening process.

Research Interests

RNA methylation machinery in the context of plant stress tolerance and stress granules
Metabolite-Protein interactions

Selected Publications

Rafique, F., Lauersen, K. J., Chodasiewicz, M., & Figueroa, N. E. (2022). A New Approach to the Study of Plastidial Stress Granules: The Integrated Use of Arabidopsis thaliana and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as Model Organisms. Plants, 11(11), 1467.
Maruri-López, I., Figueroa, N. E., Hernández-Sánchez, I. E., & Chodasiewicz, M. (2021). Plant stress granules: trends and beyond. Frontiers in Plant Science, 1538.
Figueroa, N. E., Hernandez-Sanchez, I. E., Maruri-Lopez, I., & Chodasiewicz, M. (2023). Affinity Purification Protocol Starting with a Small Molecule as Bait. In Cell-Wide Identification of Metabolite-Protein Interactions (pp. 11-19). Humana, New York, NY.

Education

2020 Dr. rer. nat., Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany
2015 Plant Biotechnology Engineer, Universidad de Concepción, Chile

Professional Profile

2021 - Present: Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Desert Agriculture, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
2015 - 2016: Research Assistant, Institute of Biological Sciences, Universidad de Talca, Chile

Awards

2015 Premio Universidad de Concepción
2016 - 2020 DAAD/Becas Chile Scholarship

KAUST Affiliations

Prof. Monika Chodasiewicz's Group

CDA - Center for Desert Agriculture

BESE - Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division