First person – Christian Gonzalez

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Christian Gonzalez is first author on ‘ Degenerating intervertebral discs in the streptozotocin-high-fat diet model of type 2 diabetes show extensive inflammation’, published in DMM. Christian is a PhD student in the lab of Simon Tang at Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA, investigating how chronic inflammation and diabetes promote intervertebral disc degeneration and lower-back pain.