Tell us about an expert/person in your field that you admire. - Post 7

Today I am going to talk to you about Dr. Daniela Seelenfreund Hirsch, she was my teacher in various subjects, and she was the teacher I had to interview in my first year for an introductory assignment. She is a very understanding and empathetic person, with impeccable ethics, which are part of the reasons I admire her, she has trained many biochemists influencing them with her ethics and love for the profession.

     Within his field of studies has been the biodegradation of lignin, the polymer that gives hardness to trees and is industrially removed by treatment with acids, so that scientific advancement in this field makes paper production more sustainable. Another of the research lines in which she participated is the study of the migration of human beings through the Pacific, through the study of the DNA of plants used as clothing fabrics during the history of the Polynesian ascents.   

     Daniela Seelenfreund is a graduate in Biochemistry from the Universidad de Chile. She obtained her PhD in 1989 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile under the supervision of Dr. Rafael Vicuña, studying the contribution of Streptomyces on lignin biodegradation. Since 1989 she is employed at the Faculty of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universidad de Chile. From 1990 to 1997 she worked with Luz María Pérez ’group on the response of Citrus limon against fungal pathogens. She also continued collaborating with Rafael Vicuña’s group working on lignin biodegradation from 1997 until 2002. From 2004 to 2010 she worked with Pilar Durruty (San Juan de Dios Hospital) on the genetics of diabetes complications, particularly on polymorphisms associated to diabetic nephropathy. Currently, she is involved in a new research line that uses genetic tools to understand past human history. In particular, the settlement of the Pacific by tracking the Austronesian expansion using paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) as a proxy of human movement. This plant, native to Asia, was and is still used as a valuable source of textiles. To identify the geographic origins of paper mulberry and reconstruct its human-mediated spread through Island Southeast Asia and into the Pacific, the genetic diversity of contemporary paper mulberry, herbarium specimens and historic textiles have been analyzed using diverse genetic markers. These analyzes have uncovered dispersal patterns of paper mulberry in the Pacific that are in agreement with archaeological evidence of human migration and interactions. She until last year coordinated the Master’s program in Biochemistry and holds the position of Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universidad de Chile. She is retired.