Overview
- Gabriela Pagnussat won the 19th national L’Oréal‑UNESCO For Women in Science prize in Buenos Aires, securing a 15 million‑peso grant after being selected from 124 applicants.
- Her team identified a heat‑activated ferroptosis pathway in plants and uses CRISPR‑dCas9 to activate the SWAP splicing factor, creating an artificial heat memory that enables survival at extreme temperatures.
- She plans trials in agronomically important species such as soybean and rice with an eye to commercialization, and she is CEO and cofounder of ThermoReLeaf SAS.
- Pagnussat says the gene‑editing strategy works within the plant’s own genomic context without adding foreign DNA, a distinction she describes as non‑transgenic.
- In the same contest, early‑career researcher Mehrnoosh Arrar received 10 million pesos for computational studies targeting the dengue virus helicase NS3 to block replication.