Eugenia (Jenny) Russinova

Biosketch

Eugenia (Jenny) Russinova is a plant cell biologist recognized for her work on endocytosis and intracellular trafficking of plant membrane-localized receptor complexes. She is known particularly for her novel chemical biology studies and for the discovery of how trafficking of membrane receptors link plant hormones to developmental and immunity mechanisms. Russinova was born and grew up in Bulgaria. She graduated from Faculty of Biology, Sofia University in Bulgaria with a degree in biotechnology and from De Montfort University, UK in 1996 with a Ph.D. in plant molecular biology. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Biochemistry, Wageningen University, The Netherlands and joined the Center for Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent in Belgium in 2006 as a Principal Investigator. She is also a professor at University of Ghent, Belgium. She is a member of both the European Molecular Biology Organization and the National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

Eugenia (Jenny) Russinova's laboratory is interested in the signal transduction pathway that plant cells use to respond to the growth promoting steroid hormones. One aspect of their research is to understand how subcellular compartmentalization and trafficking of receptor complexes influence signaling outcomes. They use high-resolution live-cell imaging, chemical genomics, and proteomics to investigate the subcellular localization, mobility, transport routes and binding interactions of different signaling components. They were able to visualize and track plant steroids in living cells, revealing that plasma membrane is the main signaling platform of the steroid receptors in plant and endocytosis attenuates signaling. They also study how downstream steroid signaling regulators, such as the highly conserved plant Glycogen synthase kinase3 (GSK3)-like kinases, ensure cross talk with other signaling pathways. They have revealed that the interaction between steroid hormones and the signaling pathway controlling stomatal development is enabled by GSK3 scaffold proteins that are linked to cell polarity.