Daniel Rodríguez-Leal

Biography

I was born in the city of Los Mochis, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. Considered one of the top producers and exporters of tomato and other vegetables, I was always interested in learning about plant biology and agriculture. I obtained my BSc in Biology focused in plant ecology and evolution, then my MSc and PhD in Plant Biotechnology were focused in developmental genetics and evolution in plant reproductive biology. Afterwards, I came to USA for my postdoc in the Lippman lab at CSHL, working in genome editing in tomato. After my postdoc, I spent 5 years in industry working with multiple crops (corn, soybeans, vegetables and flowers) managing or contributing to teams working in trait development, focused in implementation of both forward and reverse genetics strategies for trait discovery and deployment.

When I’m not in the lab or in my office, I spend time with my family playing UNO, CATAN or playing my upright bass, trying to learn some jazz tunes!

Research Interests

Plant reproductive success both in nature and in an agricultural setting is determined by the production of flowers, fruits and seeds, which is developmentally regulated by the rate of stem cell proliferation and differentiation (homeostasis) in plant meristems. Yet, plant architecture can be quite diverse and plastic, as the underlying genes interact in networks that are modified by the allelic variants and their genetic (redundancy, buffering and epistasis) and environmental interactions. Uncovering these interactions and allelic effects is key in our ability to dissect -and even modify- the genetic architecture of qualitative and quantitative traits influencing plant fitness and productivity, especially for present and future challenges brought by climate change.

The Tomato Lab @ UMD primary goals are to characterize the molecular and genetic mechanisms controlling meristem homeostasis and design genetic strategies incorporating genome editing to uncover genetic interactions and modifiers that will allow better-predicting phenotypes from genotypes for crop improvement, using the crop model tomato.