News

Third year in a row, our group has won the annual pumpkin carving contest. This year, the competition was especially strong. Congratulations to the entire team! Great job!

Laia Aran joined from the University of Barcelona to work on her Bachelor project, investigating parental effects on early embryogenesis in the genus Arabidopsis and Capsella. It was really great having her as part of our group and we hope, she will return at one point in her scientific career.

We had four great days of science at the MBP2025 Conference in Hennef. Great line-up of speakers and amazing talks! Nice to see familiar faces and to get to know the next generation of plant scientists.

To relieve some stress after organizing and successfully teaching a new basic microscopy course for the new M.Sc. program, we went ice skating in the nearby ice rink in Reutlingen. No serious injuries reported!

We are honored that our recent New Phytologist article by Chen et al. “Phosphorylation-dependent activation of the bHLH transcription factor ICE1/SCRM promotes polarization of the Arabidopsis zygote” was featured in Nature Plants Research Highlight: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-024-01886-7 “Yoda screams again”

We are convinced that successful science relies on an open mind. Our scientific models are the most accurate that we can come up with based on the current knowledge, but they will be replaced by more accurate models in the future based on experimental results. Our work this is based on scientific facts, not opinions.Continue reading “We left Twitter/X”

During the week of Halloween, we combined the Institute Happy Hour with a pumpkin carving contest. There was an amazing turnout with ten groups competing. We are proud to announce that we came in first again (but the competition was fierce).

We are happy to see our latest manuscript finally in print!It’s an exciting story about differential, cell-type specific outcomes of transcription factor regulation by MAP kinase-mediated phosphorylation. Read the full story here: https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.20265

Congratulations!

Great team effort with tough competition! The regular Thursday evening happy hour was anticipating Halloween with a Pumpkin Carving Contest. Here are some pictures of our winning pumkin(s):

Another reason to cellebrate: The DFG granted our application to rejoin the collaborative research center (Sonderforschungsbereich) SFB1101. It is inspiring to be part of such a successful example of collaboration and teamwork.

What better way to end the year than a successful PhD defense. Two weeks before the holiday break, Miao Yingjing defended her thesis “Molecular characterization of paternal-defective fertilization mutants in Arabidopsis thaliana”. It’s another one of these moments, when everyone in the group is proud to have such an excellent student as colleague. Very wellContinue reading “Dec 12th, 2022: Miao’s Defense”

Another reason to celebrate: Houming Chen successfully defended his PhD thesis. In his talk, he nicely summarized his large body of work on transcription factor control in embryonic polarity establishment. Watch out for upcoming preprint on biorxiv 😉 We are all very proud! Well done Dr. Chen!

Funded by the DFG Heisenberg Program, we have moved to the Center for Plant Molecular Biology (ZMBP), Tübingen. We are very grateful for the warm welcome by everyone and excited about the great possibilities of collaboration with outstanding plant research groups.

Right before the holidays, we had a good reason to celebrate: Kai Wang successfully defended his PhD thesis! Due to his outstanding scientific contribution, he graduated with the best mark “summa cum laude”. We are all very proud! Well done, Dr. Wang!