Author name: Maria Paula Erazo Garcia

In 2018, I received a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), Ecuador. During this time, I volunteered in different laboratories where I was able to work with a variety of systems including plants and microbes. I then joined as a Research Assistant in the Plant Biotechnology laboratory at USFQ, focusing on the genetic diversity and population structure of diverse plants in Ecuador. Interested in understanding plant-microbes interactions at first, I joined as a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech in 2021, where I now study giant viruses and their endogenization in a model green alga.