Guiomar Martín, a post-graduate researcher at the IGC – the Gulbenkian Institute of Science, has been awarded an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship, one of the most prestigious and competitive of scientific research grants and attributed annually by the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).

Working since November in the Plant Molecular Biology group led by Paula Duque, Guiomar Martín is striving to grasp the way in which plants adapt their growth to different environmental stimuli, focusing in particular on studying the molecules that regulate a cellular mechanism that brings about the production of different proteins based upon the DNA codified information. The researcher explained how this mechanism “diversifies the way in which the ARN molecules, which form after a gene gets activated in order to produce protein, are processed even before they give rise to the proteins”, adding that “different environment stimuli may influence this ARN processing and resulting in different proteins that alter the growth of plants”.

The young scientist said that the grant provided “countless scientific opportunities” and that it shall be “a challenge and a privilege to acquire more knowledge on this area of ARN biology in the laboratory of Paula Duque”. The EMBO awarded grants support the visit of researchers to other laboratories in Europe for a period of two years. Guiomar Martín received his doctoral degree from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics in Barcelona, prior to moving to the IGC laboratory. This is the seventh time that an IGC researcher has received an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship.