A (Andres) Romanowski

I am a circadian biologist that has ventured into photobiology and bioinformatics, now combining all to answer fundamental biological questions in plant sciences. I have strong background expertise in the molecular biology and physiology of circadian rhythms, photobiology, next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. During my PhD, I helped establish the first circadian Caenorhabditis elegans lab of Argentina and build a South American network of worm labs. As part of a neuroscience team (Golombek lab, Argentina), I pioneered the discovery of many circadian behaviours in this organism. After this, for my first postdoc, I devoted my research to understanding how environmental cues and endogenous rhythms could regulate alternative splicing (AS) events in plants, hence affecting their physiology (Yanovsky lab, Fundacion Instituto Leloir, Argentina). For this, I switched models and quickly transitioned into working with Arabidopsis thaliana. There, I performed the first circadian mRNAseq time-series of these plants and developed a powerful bioinformatics analysis pipeline to analyse circadian gene expression and AS events. I later moved to Scotland for my second postdoc (Halliday Lab, University of Edinburgh, UK) to gain insights into how light affects leaf development in A. thaliana. In 2021, I moved to Utrecht University (Utrecht, NL) with an MSCA fellowship to study how the clock optimises plant fitness under light-limiting conditions. Currently, my research here at WUR at the TiMES lab is focused on understanding how plants optimise their growth and development in response to a changing environment.