Elena Alvarez-Buylla Roces

I was born in Mexico City where I live with my dearest nine year-old daughter, Jimena, and my loving partner, Paco. I am lucky to be or have always been affectively very close to the rest of my beloved family too: my grandparents and parents, brother and sister and all my niezes and nephews.

I am a full professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico where I am presently combining experimental, evolutionary and dynamic modelling approaches to address questions on the genetic interactions that govern plant development and the evolution of plant form. I am very interested in gaining a deeper and more technical view of dynamic non-linear models that may are useful tools for understanding how genetic variation maps onto phenotypic variation. I am a biologist by training and plants have always been the main source of inspiration in my scientific career, but I took a few courses on mathematics and have acquired some computational tools that I have applied in the different biological areas in which I have experience. These range from population dynamics and genetics of tropical forest trees to the field that now occupies most of my research efforts: molecular genetics and evolution of plant developmental mechanisms. I am the head of a laboratory with two postdoctoral fellows, one associate professor, six graduate students and three undergraduates, and have always been actively involved in teaching.

I actively collaborate in a multidisciplinary group involving mathematicians, physicists and biologists from UNAM. We hold a permanent seminar that was organized by the group of Biomathematics at the Faculty of Sciences initiated by Dr. Germinal Cocho and collaborators. I am presently working with one of my graduate students, Carlos Espinosa, and a professor from the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Systems (UNAM), Dr. Pablo Padilla, who is greatly expanding our technical capacity in mathematical modelling. We are jointly working on several projects that aim at integrating the molecular genetic data gathered for various aspects of plant development. I am sure that a close interaction with the affiliated faculty of The Santa Fe Institute will be very influential and beneficial for expanding our multidisciplinary research capacity and I am looking forward to it. I am sure this will also strengthen my ability to train more students with a multidisciplinary background so needed in the biological sciences.

Published Research

Alvarez-Buylla, E.R., S.J. Liljegren, S. Pelaz, S.J. Gold, C. Burgeff, G.S. Ditta, F. Vergara, and M.F. Yanofsky. "MADS-box gene evolution beyond flowers: expression in pollen, endosperm, guard cells, roots and trichomes." Plant Journal 4 (2000): 457-466 [PDF] 1.6 MB

Burgeff, C., S.J. Liljegren, R. Tapia, M. Yanofsky, and E.R. Alvarez-Buylla. "MADS-box gene expression in lateral primordia, apical meristems and differentiated tissues of Arabidopsis thaliana roots." Planta 214 (2002):365-372 [PDF] 291 KB

Martínez-Castilla, L. and E.R. Alvarez-Buylla. "Adaptive evolution in the Arabidopsis MADS-box gene family inferred from its complete resolved phylogeny." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 23 (200#): 13407-13412. [PDF] 432 KB

Gamboa, A. J. Paéz-Valencia, G.F. Acevedo, P. Vázquez-Moreno, R.E. Alvarez-Buylla. "Floral transcription factor AGAMOUS interacts in vitro with a Leucine-rich repeat and an acid phosphatase protein complex." Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 288 (2001): 1018-1026 [PDF] 315 KB

Mendoza, L. and E.R. Alvarez-Buylla. "Dynamics of the genetic regulatory network for flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana." Journal of Theoretical Biology 2 (1998): 307-319 [PDF] 300 KB

Luis Mendoza and E.R. Alvarez-Buylla. "Genetic Regulation of Root Hair Development in Arabidopsis thaliana: A Network Model." J. Theor. Biol. 204 (2000): 311-326 [PDF] 245 KB

Pelaz, S., R. Tapia-Lopez, E.R. Alvarez-Buylla, and M.F. Yanofsky. "Conversion of leaves into petals in Arabidopsis." Current Biology 11 (2001): 182-184 [PDF] 242 KB

Vergara-Silva, F., L. Martínez-Castilla, and E.R. Alvarez-Buylla. "MAD-Box Genes: Development and Evolution of Plant Body Parts." J. Phycol. 36 (2000): 803-812 [PDF] 408 KB

Vergara, F., S. Espinosa, A. Ambrose, S. Vàzquez-Santana, A. Martìnez-Mena, J. Màrquez-Guzmàn, E. Martìnez, E. Meyerowitz, and E.R. Alvarez-Buylla. "Inside-out flowers characteristic of Lacandonia schismatica evolved at least before its divergence from a closely related taxon, Triuris brevistylis." International Journal of Plant Sciences. 3 (2003):345-357 [PDF] 1.5 MB