Dr. Naoufal Lakhssassi is a Post-doctoral researcher since 2012 in the department of Plant Soil and Agricultural Systems, Agriculture College, Southern Illinois University, USA. He holds PhD in the field of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Malaga University, Spain in the year 2011. Dr. Lakhssassi has been working on different biology projects related with plant microbiology, plant genetics, plant biochemistry, plant biotechnology and plant developmental biology, plant evolution, homology modeling, mutational analysis and also worked as a reviewer for peer-reviewed scientific journals including BMC genomics, Plos1, Plant Cell reports , Crop science, Atlas Journal of Plant Biology  and Atlas Journal of Biology. He handled several research projects during these years mainly working with Arabidopsis thaliana, tomato and soybean with a major focus on soybean disease resistance and agronomical traits improvement. Moreover, highlights of his research work include characterization of considerable mutants/lines with increased seed oleic and stearic acids content, high protein content, high yielding varieties, lines with high percentage of nodulation and high nitrogen content.His expertize in charactering multiple gene families from both A. thaliana and G. max allowed the identification of several genes involved in seed germination, plant development, fatty acid pathway, nodulation, and soybean resistance against SCN, an important aspect in plant production.

Plant Microbiology Plant genetics Plant biochemistry Plant biotechnology Plant Developmental Biology