Martina is from Argentina. She did her Bachelor, Master and PhD studies in Biology at the University of Buenos Aires doing research at the Leloir Institute. From early in her career, she has been fascinated by plant developmental plasticity, and since her Master's degree she has been working on plant development in response to light and temperature signals from the environment. During her PhD, under the supervision of Jorge Casal, she focused on the interaction between light and temperature signalling and found that the activity of the light receptor phytochrome B is also regulated by temperature. For her postdoc, she moved to Christian Fankhauser's laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she focused on the blue light receptors phototropins. There she described mechanisms of directional signal perception in leaves and hypocotyls. Since September 2024 she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Neuchâtel. In her current project she is focusing on how plants modify their shoot architecture in response to light and temperature signals from the environment. In addition to doing research, Martina enjoys teaching plant biology and organizing science outreach activities.

• Environmental control of shoot architecture in Arabidopsis - Swiss National Science Foundation
• How plants tell TIMEperature: The circadian clock and temperature cues interplay in modulating plant physiology - Marsden Fund (Wellington, NZ)

Nawkar GM*, Legris M*, Goyal A, Schmid-Siegert E, Fleury J, Mucciolo A, De Bellis D, Trevisan M, Schueler A and Fankhauser C§, 2023. Air channels create a directional light signal to regulate hypocotyl phototropism. Science, 382(6673), pp.935-940.

Legris M§, 2023. Light and temperature regulation of leaf morphogenesis in Arabidopsis. New Phytologist, 240(6), pp.2191-2196. Review.

Legris M, Szarzynska-Erden BM, Trevisan M, Allenbach-Petrolati L, Fankhauser C§. 2021. Phototropin-mediated perception of light direction in leaves regulates blade flattening. Plant physiology, 187(3):1235-1249.

Legris M§, Boccaccini A. 2020. Stem phototropism towards blue and ultraviolet light. Physiologia Plantarum. doi:10.1111/ppl.13098. Review.

Legris M, Ince YÇ and Fankhauser C§. 2019. Molecular mechanisms underlying phytochrome-controlled morphogenesis in plants. Nature communications, 10(1), pp.1-15. Review.

Legris M*, Nieto C*, Sellaro R, Prat S, Casal JJ§. 2017. Perception and signalling of light and temperature cues in plants. Plant Journal. 90(4):683-697. Review.

Legris M, Klose C*, Burgie ES*, Costigliolo C*, Neme M, Hiltbrunner A, Wigge PA, Schäfer E**, Vierstra R**, Casal JJ§. 2016. Phytochrome B integrates light and temperature signals in Arabidopsis. Science. 354(6314):897-900.

Trupkin SA*, Legris M*, Buchovsky AS, Tolava Rivero MB, Casal JJ§. 2014. Phytochrome B nuclear bodies respond to the low red / far-red ratio and to the reduced irradiance of canopy shade in Arabidopsis. Plant Physiology. 165(4):1698-1708.

Pacín M*, Legris M*, Casal JJ§. 2014. Rapid Decline in Nuclear COSTITUTIVE PHOTOMORPHOGENESIS1 Abundance Anticipates the Stabilization of Its Target ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL5 in the Light. Plant Physiology. 164(3):1134-8. 

§ Corresponding author
* Equal contributions

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