Prof. Dr. Joseph Dubrovsky

Prof. Dubrovsky was born in Moscow, Soviet Union, in 1957 and was involved in the studies of plants since early age; when he was 15, his work on Cactus Ecophysiology won a gold medal in a competition of Young Scientists of the Soviet Union. He studied Biology and Chemistry at Moscow Pedagogical University. During his Ph.D. (obtained in 1987), he proposed using cucumber, Cucumis sativus, lateral roots for screening of active cytostatic anticancer compounds. Since 1991 he is working in Mexico, and since 2001 a professor of UNAM, known for his studies of root development in plants; the author of 77 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 17 book chapters, and one e-Book.  

Research Summary

The main interests of Prof. Dubrovsky are root development, particularly, the root apical meristem organization, maintenance, and function as well as in lateral root development. He discovered phenomena of seed hydration memory in cactus seeds (1996), primary root growth determinacy and the root apical meristem exhaustion in Cactaceae (1997). He studies the mechanisms of the root apical meristem maintenance using both Cactaceae and Arabidopsis. This work permitted identification of new pathways of the root apical meristem maintenance, dependent on metabolism of folates and threonine. Research of lateral root initiation in Arabidopsis allowed him and his colleagues a formulation of the concept of auxin as a morphogenetic trigger (2008), discovery of founder cell recruitment (2020), and others.

Keywords  

Root biology, root apical meristem maintenance, stem cells in plants, lateral root development, root initiation.