Jean Dillon

Jean currently works within the Whitewoods group.

Most of us learn in school about photosynthesis, which mostly happens in palisade and spongy mesophyll cells in dicots. The palisade layer, closer to the upper surface of the leaf, consists of more tightly packed cells that can elongate and generate extra cell layers under high light conditions. The spongy layer consists of cells with more convoluted shapes and large airspaces.

Jean is interested in how palisade and spongy mesophyll cell identity is established during leaf development. To address this question, she has been doing mutant screens in Arabidopsis thaliana to find mutations that affect the formation of these two cell layers with their typical properties. Jean is working on mapping the mutations to the relevant genes.