Magdalena Bezanilla PhD

Magdalena Bezanilla is an Associate Professor of Biology at UMass Amherst. She completed a BS degree at UC Santa Barbara and a PhD at Johns Hopkins University and was a Post-doctoral Fellow at Washington University. Dr. Bezanilla pioneered the use of the moss Physcomitrella patens as a model system to investigate how proteins within the plant cell direct and regulate cell growth and morphogenesis, particularly focusing on the regulation of the filamentous actin cytoskeletal network. The Bezanilla laboratory has developed such tools as RNA interference (RNAi), quantitative complementation analyses, and rapid quantitative growth assays for use in P. patens to characterize cell growth and development. Recent work has led to the development of a working model of how tip growth and cell division occur in moss cells.