Life is not easy. There are two ways to cope with that – run away or adapt. Plants cannot run away, therefore they have to adapt. We want to understand, how plants meet the challenges of their environment. This represents a multifacetted task which we approach at three levels. Therefore the group is composed of three subgroups:
 |
Group Cell Biology and Development Each individual plant cell is able to regenerate the entire organism. We cannot do that. This ability is linked to an internal “direction” of individual cells. This “direction” is continuously perpetuated by the cytoskeleton. How is this “direction “ generated? Why is it perpetually “requestioned”. These questions require new approaches. Using chemical tools we try to redesign plant cells (chemical engineering), and in combination with microfluidics we attempt to imprint chemical or mechanical cues upon regenerating plant cells. More |
 |
Group Stress Physiology Plants have to face numerous adverse conditions: drought and salt stress, attacks by insects or fungi, or UV-stress, just to name a few. Plants use the phytohormone jasmonate to control their responses to environmental stress. We mainly work on rice, the most important staple crop worldwide. In addition to drought and salt stress, the response to insect attack is investigate. To discriminate the wound signal from chemical factors, we use a kind of mechanic caterpillar (MecWorm). Which genes and signals are involved in stress adaptation? How can plant cells distinguish different stress factors? How can this knowledge b used to render plants more robust against stress? |
 |
Group Biodiversity Biology is searching for general laws - we too. But the diversity of life has to be taken seriously. We learn from evolution and use plant biodiversity to develop new strategies for sustainable agriculture, using grapevine and rice as model crops. By means of the Wild Grape Collection of the Botanical Garden we identified novel strategies of plant defence that are currently used to breed novel disease resistant grapes. Our vision is viticulture that is (mostly) independent of chemical plant protection. To exploit biodiversity, we must first be able to recognise biodiversity. More |
RSS-Feed