Nicole Pontarin
Nicole was a Research Officer, working under the supervision of Chief Investigator Graham Faquhar on a project studying how carbon fluxes and biomass accumulation are affected under the application of diverse stimuli.
She completed her PhD entitled “Metabolic response of flax (Linum usitatissimum) plant and seed to elicitation with aminobutyric acids” at the University of Picardie Jules Verne (France). Her research work was conducted within the laboratory of Biology of Plants and Innovation (BIOPI) and the plant breeding company Laboulet. She investigated plant physiological and metabolic response to BABA, a powerful priming agent and water-deficit inducing molecule. Also, as stress can induce the production of bioactive metabolites in plant food products, she used BABA and its analogues to develop a treatment to increase the nutritional and commercial value of flax seeds.
Her PhD allowed her to add metabolomics to my molecular biology skills, which she acquired with a BSc in Molecular Biology followed by a MSc in Biotechnology Applied to Food Security and Nutrition.
Nicole was part of the Centre from 2019 to 2021