Daniel Rodriguez Leal

I was born in the city of Los Mochis, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. Considered one of the top producers and exporters of tomato and other vegetables, I was always interested in learning about plant biology and agriculture. I obtained my BSc in Biology focused in plant ecology and evolution, then my MSc and PhD in Plant Biotechnology were focused in developmental genetics and evolution in plant reproductive biology. Afterwards, I came to USA for my postdoc in the Lippman lab at CSHL, working in genome editing in tomato. After my postdoc, I spent 5 years in industry working with multiple crops (corn, soybeans, vegetables and flowers) managing or contributing to teams working in trait development, focused in implementation of both forward and reverse genetics strategies for trait discovery and deployment. 

When I’m not in the lab or in my office, I spend time with my family playing UNO, CATAN or playing my upright bass, trying to learn some jazz tunes!

Areas of Expertise

• Plant Developmental Genetics
• Genome Editing
• Trait Development in Biotech
• Phylogenetics and Evolution

Education 

• 2004-2008. BSc in Biology, with specialization in Ecology and Evolution. Universidad de Occidente, Unidad Los Mochis.
• 2008-2010. MSc in Plant Biotechnology. Thesis: Phylogenetic Analysis of Argonaute gene family in Plants. Langebio, Cinvestav Irapuato. 
• 2010-2015. PhD in Plant Biotechnology. Thesis: Natural variation in epigenetic pathways influences female gamete precursor specification in Arabidopsis thaliana. Langebio, Cinvestav Irapuato.

Awards and Honors

• PEW Latin American Fellow. PEW foundation. 2016 – 2018.
• Weizmann award for the best Ph.D. thesis in biological sciences. Mexican Academy of Sciences. 2016.
• Adjunct Assistant Professorship. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology. North Carolina State University. 2022-present.

Plant reproductive success both in nature and in an agricultural setting is determined by the production of flowers, fruits and seeds, which is developmentally regulated by the rate of stem cell proliferation and differentiation (homeostasis) in plant meristems. Yet, plant architecture can be quite diverse and plastic, as the underlying genes interact in networks that are modified by the allelic variants and genetic (redundancy, buffering and epistasis) and environmental interactions. Uncovering these interactions is key in our ability to dissect -and even modify- the genetic architecture of qualitative and quantitative traits influencing plant fitness and productivity, especially for present and future challenges brought by climate change. 

The Tomato Lab @ UMD primary goals are to characterize the mechanisms responsible for genetic buffering in meristem homeostasis and design genetic strategies incorporating genome editing to uncover genetic interactions and modifiers that will allow better-predicting phenotypes from genotypes for crop improvement, using the crop model tomato.

Google Scholar

Research Papers

1. Xingang Wang, Lyndsey Aguirre, Daniel Rodríguez-Leal, Anat Hendelman, Matthias Benoit, and Zachary B. Lippman (2021). Dissecting cis-regulatory control of quantitative trait variation in a plant stem cell circuit. Nature Plants 7(4):419-427.
2. Hendelman A, Zebell S, Rodriguez-Leal D, Dukler N, Robitaille G, Wu X, Kostyun J, Tal L, Wang P, Bartlett ME, Eshed Y, Efroni I, Lippman ZB (2021). Conserved pleiotropy of an ancient plant homeobox gene uncovered by cis-regulatory dissection. Cell 184(7):1724-1739. e16.
3. Gordillo S.V.G., Escobar-Guzman R., Rodriguez-Leal D., Vielle-Calzada JP., Ronceret A. (2020) Whole-Mount Immunolocalization Procedure for Plant Female Meiocytes. In: Pradillo M., Heckmann S. (eds) Plant Meiosis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2061. Humana, New York, NY.
4. Rodriguez-Leal D., Xu C., Kwon C.T., Soyars C., Demesa-Arevalo E., Man J., Liu L., Lemmon Z.H., Jones D.S., Van Eck J., Jackson D.P., Bartlett M.E., Nimchuk Z.L., Lippman Z.B. (2019). Evolution of buffering in a genetic circuit controlling plant stem cell proliferation. Nat Genet. 51(5):786-792.
5. Lemmon Z.H., Reem N.T., Dalrymple J., Soyk S., Swartwood K.E., Rodriguez-Leal D., Van Eck J., Lippman Z.B. (2018). Rapid improvement of domestication traits in an orphan crop by genome editing. Nat Plants. 4(10):766-770.
6. Rodríguez-Leal, D., Lemmon, Z.H., Man., J., Bartlett, M.E., Lippman., Z.B. (2017). Engineering quantitative trait variation for crop improvement by genome editing. Cell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2017.08.030.
7. Rodríguez-Leal, D., Castillo-Cobián, A., Rodríguez-Arévalo, I., and Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. (2016). A Primary Sequence Analysis of the ARGONAUTE Protein Family in Plants. Front. Plant Sci. 7, 1347.
8. Hernández-Lagana, E., Rodríguez-Leal, D., Lúa, J., and Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. (2016). A Multigenic Network of ARGONAUTE4 Clade Members Controls Early Megaspore Formation in Arabidopsis. Genetics 204, 1045–1056.
9. Rodríguez-Leal, D., León-Martínez, G., Abad-Vivero, U., and Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. (2015). Natural variation in epigenetic pathways affects the specification of female gamete precursors in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell 27, 1034–1045.
10. Escobar-Guzmán, R., Rodríguez-Leal, D.*, Vielle-Calzada, J.-P., and Ronceret, A. (2015). Whole-mount immunolocalization to study female meiosis in Arabidopsis. Nat. Protoc. 10, 1535–1542. *Equal contribution.
11. Sánchez-León, N., Arteaga-Vázquez, M., Alvarez-Mejía, C., Mendiola-Soto, J., Durán-Figueroa, N., Rodríguez-Leal, D., Rodríguez-Arévalo, I., García-Campayo, V., García-Aguilar, M., Olmedo-Monfil, V., et al. (2012). Transcriptional analysis of the Arabidopsis ovule by massively parallel signature sequencing. J. Exp. Bot. 63, 3829–3842.
12. Vielle-Calzada, J.P., Hernández-Lagana, E., Rodríguez-Leal, D., Rodríguez-Arévalo, I., León-Martínez, G., Abad-Vivero, U., Demesa-Arévalo, E., Armenta-Medina, a., and Alvarez-Mejía, C. (2012). Reproductive versatility and the epigenetic control of female gametogenesis. Cold Spring Harb. Symp. Quant. Biol. 77, 17–21.
13. Rodriguez-Leal D, Vielle-Calzada JP. Regulation of apomixis: learning from sexual experience (2012). Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2012;15(5):549–555. doi:10.1016/j.pbi.2012.09.005.

Patent applications

• Methods for Reproducing Plants Asexually and Compositions Thereof. US20170290279A1.
• Systems for cloning plants through asexual means. US20160208282A1.
• Compositions and methods for generating weak alleles in plants. WO/2018/213547.
• Excisable plant transgenic loci with signature protospacer adjacent motifs or signature guide rna recognition sites. WO2022026395A2.
• Inir12 transgenic maize. US20220030806A1.
• Inht26 transgenic soybean. US20220030822A1.
• Inir12 transgenic maize. US20220033842A1.
• Inht26 transgenic soybean. WO2022026540A1.
• Inht31 transgenic soybean. US20220033834A1.
• Inht31 transgenic soybean. US20220154194A1.
• Inir12 transgenic maize. US20220033836A1.

Invited:

• Natural variation in epigenetic pathways affects the specification of female gamete precursors in Arabidopsis. Rodríguez-Leal, D., León-Martínez, G., Abad-Vivero, U., Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. XVI National Congress of Biochemistry and Plant Molecular Biology & IX Symposium Mexico-USA. Querétaro, México. December, 2015.
• Natural Variation in Epigenetic Pathways Affects the Specification of Female Gamete Precursors in Arabidopsis. Rodríguez-Leal, D., León-Martínez, G., Abad-Vivero, U., Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. 2015 In Vitro Biology Meeting. Tucson, Arizona. May 30 – June 3, 2015.
• Engineering quantitative trait variation for crop improvement. Invited speaker. LANGEBIO-CINVESTAV Irapuato. October, 2017.
• Engineering quantitative trait variation for crop improvement. Invited speaker. The Global Institute for Food Security. December, 2017.
• From model systems and basic research, to crops and industry. A CRISPR journey. Invited speaker for an NIH-sponsored graduate course at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. October 2020.
• Dissecting and modulating the genetic networks underlying stem cell homeostasis in tomato…A CRISPR tale! Inaugural invited speaker on Alumni Seminar series at CINVESTAV, Irapuato. November 2020.
• From model systems and basic research, to crops and industry. A CRISPR journey. Invited speaker to the Plant Molecular Biology Spring Seminar Series at the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at Yale University. March, 2021.
• Trait Engineering using Genome Editing… A CRISPR tale for crop improvement! Invited speaker to the PMB seminar series presentation. Dept of Plant and Microbial Biology. North Carolina State University. November, 2021.
• Trait Engineering using Genome Editing… A CRISPR tale for crop improvement! Invited speaker to the BPSC250 Series Spring 2022 from UC Riverside. April, 2022.
• Career development workshop. Invited panelist to the MAS-ASPB & UMD Plant Symposium - Joint Meeting. University of Maryland, College Park. May, 2022.
• Workshop on Biosciences and 15th anniversary of the graduate program in Biosciencies. Universidad de Sonora (UNISON). Sonora, Mexico. November, 2022.

Oral:

• Phylogenetic analysis of ARGONAUTE gene family in plants. Rodríguez-Leal, D., Castillo-Cobián, A., Rodríguez-Arévalo, I., Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. XIV National Congress of Biochemistry and Plant Molecular Biology & 7th Symposium Mexico-USA, December 2011.

Poster:

• Phylogenetic analysis of ARGONAUTE gene family in plants. Rodríguez-Leal, D., Castillo-Cobián, A., Rodríguez-Arévalo, I., Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. XIII National Congress of Biochemistry and Plant Molecular Biology & 6th Symposium Mexico-USA, November 2009.
• Natural variation in epigenetic pathways affects the specification of female gamete precursors in Arabidopsis. Rodríguez-Leal, D., León-Martínez, G., Abad-Vivero, U., Vielle-Calzada, J.-P. International Conference on Arabidopsis Research (ICAR) 2014, Vancouver Canada, July 28 – August 1, 2014.