Joao Torres Leiva Neto started his PhD program in August of 1999. He grew up in the rolling hills of the "cerrado" region (Brazilian savannas) with lots of cheese (from Minas Gerais) and coffee (good one). After a couple years in Wisconsin and at University of Minnesota (MAST program) he managed to come back home and finish his BS degree in Agronomy at the Universidade Federal de Uberlandia. While there, he worked at NOVARTIS Molecular Marker Lab. His research was focused on marker assisted selection, breeding and studies in the performance of pest resistant maize hybrids. Here, in the middle of the Sonoran desert, he still working with maize. Currently, his research is focused on the study of lines over-expressing cyclin dependent kinases (CDK) dominant negative mutants and mitotic cyclins under control of an endosperm specific promoter. As part of the goal of our cell cycle project, the characterization of these lines should tell us something about the effects of these cell cycle regulators during endoreduplication in maize endosperm cells.
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