Biography
I am currently a PhD student in Dr Sam Brockington's group (Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge) where I am focused in exploring the potential applications of betalain pigments and improving production platforms.
Research
My main research interests reside in the field of metabolic engineering and the transference of plant metabolic pathways to industrially scalable microorganisms in order to produce high value compounds. Betalains present many beneficial features to become target molecules for metabolic engineering.
Publications
Key publications:
Lopez-Nieves, S., Yang, Y., Timoneda, A., Wang, M., Feng, T., Smith, S. A., Brockington, S. F. and Maeda, H. A. (2018), Relaxation of tyrosine pathway regulation underlies the evolution of betalain pigmentation in Caryophyllales. New Phytol, 217: 896–908.
