[5] As a teenager growing up in South Texas, and during college, Gonzalez worked as a migrant farm worker with her family picking cucumbers, cotton, and sugar beets.

She received her PhD in cell biology from Rutgers University in 1972, for a dissertation titled "Peroxisomes and the Regulation of the Capacity for Assimilation of Two-Carbon Units in Saccharomyces cerevisiae".

[3] In 1977, as an assistant professor, González was awarded a grant from the National Chicano Council on higher education sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

[1] In 2005, she was the recipient of the University of California, Los Angeles' first Distinguished Teaching Award for "superb mentorship" to undergraduates engaged in scholarly activities.

[11] An ATPase removes protons in exchange for ATP from the vacuole, allowing the formation of carbon dioxide, a mechanism linking photosynthesis with calcification.