María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces

Álvarez-Buylla was born into an elite and privileged family of scientists in Mexico City in 1959. Her father Ramón Álvarez-Buylla was a neurophysiologist and founder of the Department of Physiology at CINVESTAV.[1] Her mother, Elena Roces Dorronsoro, is a biologist and researcher at the University of Colima.[1] Her grandparents worked in aviation and her uncle is the economist José Carlos Roces Dorronsoro. Her brother, Arturo Álvarez-Buylla, is a neurobiologist. She attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she studied biology and graduated in 1983. Her undergraduate dissertation involved ethnobotany, and was acknowledged by the Botanical Society of Mexico. She was awarded the Gabino Barreda medal for her educational performance. She remained at the National Autonomous University of Mexico for her master's degree, where she investigated Cecropia from Los Tuxtlas. In 1986 Álvarez-Buylla moved to the University of California, Berkeley for her doctoral studies, where she worked with Montgomery Slatkin on rainforests.[2] After earning her PhD Álvarez-Buylla was appointed a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, where she worked in La Jolla on molecular genetics.[3]

She has investigated how genetic information is mapped onto a phenotype. She joined the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1992.[4] Here she leads the Laboratory of Genetics, Epigenetics, Development and Evolution of Plants.[5] Her work is centred in developmental ecology, and she has looked to understand the mechanisms of cell differentiation and morphogenesis.[6] She has focussed on the balance between proliferation and cell differentiation in the Arabidopsis thaliana.[6] She has investigated the hormonal pathways in plants, as well as studying how they respond to different environments. Álvarez-Buylla has worked in both experimental and theoretical science, developing models that can predict phenotypic patterns, and monitor the role of the environment in complex feedback networks.[6] She provided the framework for understanding of MADS-box genes, which act as regulators of plant and animal development.[6]

Following on from her early career studying rainforests, Álvarez-Buylla has continued to research biodiversity in Mexico. She has created demographic-genetic mathematical models to help with forest regeneration and predict the effects of harvest and species extinction.[6] The models developed by Álvarez-Buylla are used in conservation and forest management worldwide.[6] Her research has identified over 20 new scientific species.[6] She has monitored the biosecurity of Lacandonia schismatica, a crop of immense importance to Mexican communities, as well as various pine populations.[6]

Since taking up her current post as director of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces has undertaken actions against the community that she represents.[16] The most recent is a plot for criminalizing 31 scientists and academicians of the same council that she leads, CONACYT. Those 31 scientists and academicians have publicly and openly expressed their differences with the current policies of the CONACYT, and have outcried the persecution of those who exercised their functions based on the regulations then in force, which were guided by a different conception of the country's scientific and technological development.[17]

The context of the plot :

• Alejandro Gertz Manero[18] the current Attorney General of Mexico under the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been trying for 11 years to be a member of the National System of Researchers (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores or SNI[19]), however, the SNI concluded that he has no merits for being a member.
• Gertz Manero rejects the conclusions from the SNI and files a discrimination complaint before the National Council to Prevent Discrimination[20] (Spanish: Consejo Nacional para Prevenir La Discriminación; CONAPRED).
• María Elena Álvarez-Buylla states that the petitioner was right in alleging that the results of the SNI Evaluation Commissions are "arbitrary". Álvarez-Buylla exercises her own non-arbitrary judgment and rules that "irregularities and human rights violations were committed", since "an arbitrary exercise of the evaluation functions has been detected, as well as partiality and lack of objectivity" leading to "discriminatory practices".[21]
• María Elena Álvarez-Buylla grants Alejandro Gertz Manero the highest level as a member of the SNI, level III, even when Gertz Manero has been accused of plagiarism of the book Guillermo Prieto (Biography), published by the Secretaría de Educación Pública in 1967.[22]
• Alejandro Gertz Manero as Attorney General of Mexico presents criminal charges against members of the SNI who rejected his entry to the SNI, and states that those academics “used federal funds meant for scientific research on a private organization, buying furniture, vehicles, properties, and paying salaries and other services”. However, no wrongdoing can be claimed since those academicians proceeded according to a law of 2019, which was in force when they used those funds.[23]