studied Microbiology at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, followed by research stays at the International Center for Medical Research and Training (CIDEIM) in Cali, Colombia and Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany, and Vienna, Austria. In the early 2000s, she shifted to plant research to the Center for Plant Molecular Biology (ZMBP), and in 2006 obtained a PhD in Developmental Genetics at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research as a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the University of California (UCSD), San Diego, USA involved the structural and biochemical elucidation of the receptor of the plant hormone auxin. Since 2011, she is head of the research group „Signal Integration“ at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) in Halle (Saale). Her research program seeks to understand how flexible conformations in intrinsically disordered proteins in plants influence protein stability and thereby cellular signaling.
Project within the RTG
Key publications
Winkler M, Niemeyer M, Hellmuth A, Janitza P, Christ G, Samodelov S, Wilde V, Majovsky P, Trujillo M, Zurbriggen M, Hoehenwarter W, Quint M, Calderón Villalobos LIA Variation in auxin sensing guides AUX/IAA transcriptional repressor ubiquitylation and destruction. Nat Comms. 2017, 7;8:15706
Dinesh DC, Kovermann M, Gopalswamy M, Hellmuth A, Calderón Villalobos LI, Lilie H, Balbach J, Abel S Solution structure of the PsIAA4 oligomerization domain reveals interaction modes for transcription factors in early auxin response. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015, 112(19):6230-5
Calderón Villalobos LI, Lee S, De Oliveira C, Ivetac A, Brandt W, Armitage L, Sheard LB, Tan X, Parry G, Mao H, Zheng N, Napier R, Kepinski S, Estelle M. A combinatorial TIR1/AFB-Aux/IAA co-receptor system for differential sensing of auxin. Nat Chem Biol. 2012, 8: 477-485
Website: https://www.ipb-halle.de/en/research/molecular-signal-processing/research-groups/signal-integration/