Education

• B.Sc. Biochemical Engineering. Instituto Tecnológico de Mérida. 2003.
• Ph.D. Vegetal Biotechonology. Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados. 2012.
• Post-Doctorate. Plant Genomics, Plant-pathogen interaction. Michigan State University, North Carolina State University. 2014, 2016.

Current research

• Agrobiotechnology
• Microoroganism Biotechnology

ONGOING PROJECTS

• Use of multi-omics and bioinformatics tools to understand the molecular response and genomic adaptations to biotic and abiotic stress of commercial crops in Mexico. (INFR-2016)
• Characterization of the transcriptome and the endofite metagenome in wild Vanilla planifolia. (INFR-2016)
• Carica papaya genome sequencing. (Ciencia Basica 2017-2018, INFR-2016)
• analysis of flower development in Cordia dodecandra. (Ciencia Basica 2017-2018, INFR-2016)
• Development of bioinformatics strategies to identify genes of biotechnological interest. (Ciencia Basica 2017-2018)

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

• Diepenbrock C., Llut D., Magallanes M., Kandians C., Lipka A., Bradbury P., Hamilton J., Wooldridge E., Vaillancourt B., Góngora-Castillo E., Wallace J., Cepela J., Mateor-Hernández M., Owens B., Tiede T., Buckler E., Rocherford T., Buell R., Gore M., DellaPenna D.. Elevn biosyntheic genes explain the majority of natural variation in carotenoid levels in maize grain. The Plant Cell, 33: 882, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koab032.
• Estrella-Maldonado H., Girón-Ramírez A., Fuentes-Ortiz G., Peraza-Hecheverría S., Martínez-de la Vega O., Góngora-Castillo E., Santamaría JM. Transcriptomic anlysis reveals key transcription factors associated to drought tolerance in a wild papaya (Carica papaya) genotype. Plos One, 16: e0245855. , (2020). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245855.
• Salcedo A., Al-Haddad J., Buell R., Trail F., Góngora-Castillo E., Quesada-Ocampor L Comparative transcriptome analysis of two contrasting maize inbred lines provides insights on molecular mechanisms of stalk rot resistance. PhytoFrontiers, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTOFR-12-20-0055-R.
• Elsa Góngora-Castillo, Luisa A López-Ochoa, Max M Apolinar-Hernández, Aldo M Caamal-Pech, Perla A Contreras-de la Rosa, Adriana Quiroz-Moreno, Jorge H Ramírez-Prado, Aileen O’Connor-Sánchez. Data mining of metagenomes to find novel enzymes: a non-computationally intensive method. 3 Biotech, 10: 1, (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-019-2044-6.
• Luis A Lara-Pérez, Iván Oros-Ortega, Iván Córdova-Lara, Héctor Estrada-Medina, Aileen O’Connor-Sánchez, Elsa Góngora-Castillo, Luis Sáenz-Carbonell. Seasonal shifts of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in Cocos nucifera roots in Yucatan, Mexico. Mycorrhiza, 30: 269, (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-020-00944-0..

PATENTS OR TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS

• Lina Quesada-Ocampo, Saunia Withers, Elsa Beatriz Gongora-Castillo. Methods for diagnosis of Pseudoperonospora cubensis infection and selection of plant resistance genes to the same. 16331191. USA. (2019).

RECOGNITIONS AND AWARDS

• 2015-2017. Level I. Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (CONACYT)
• 2018-2021. Level I. Sistema Nacional de Investigadores - CONACYT.

RECOMMENDED WEB PAGES

• Góngora-Castillo Lab. https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Elsa-Gongora-Castillo-Lab. HTML Format