Valerie Hecht

Valerie is a Plant Molecular Biologist and her career started in Europe (France and The Netherlands) working on genes involved in Arabidopsis embryogenesis. Her main research interests nowadays focus around the molecular mechanisms that control plant development, in particularly on genes regulating flowering in legumes. After isolating most of the known flowering genes and identifying the molecular basis for several pea flowering mutants, it became apparent that FT-like genes were essential to the flowering mechanism in legumes. This gene family and its roles seems to be more complex than expected and involves at least two mobile signals. Understanding the functional roles of the legume FT genes will provide a great opportunity to understand flowering in this important group of crops. Valerie is fluent in several languages (French, Spanish, Catalan and English) and loves gardening and crafting in her spare time.