SPEAKER'S PROFILES

Chris Bowler

Chris Bowler is Director of plant biology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was born in 1965 in the UK. Following a first degree in microbiology at the University of Warwick, UK, he performed PhD studies at the University of Ghent in Belgium followed by postdoctoral studies at The Rockefeller University in New York, USA. In 1994 he established his own research group working on higher plants and marine diatoms at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples Italy and in 2002 he took up his current position in Paris. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed scientific articles in international journals. His major interest is in understanding the response of plants and marine diatoms to environmental signals. In plants, he identified the first high pigment gene, mutation of which causes light hypersensitivity and increased fruit phytonutrient content. The gene encodes the photomorphogenesis regulator DET1, which he found to be involved in regulating chromatin architecture around light-regulated genes. In marine diatoms he established molecular tools to assess gene function and has played a major role in coordinating the whole genome sequencing of several species. Using functional genomics he has revealed the cellular response of diatoms to nutrients such as iron and nitrogen, to different light wavelengths, and to allelopathic infochemicals. He is member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and associate editor of several major scientific journals.

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Speaker's profiles