Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology

Mother plants determine the fate of hybrid seeds

Researchers are breeding protein-rich rice varieties that cause minimal increase in blood sugar levels

Scientists discover key regulators of seed development in a parental stalemate

Foods enriched with micronutrients can improve people's nutrition

Researchers have identified the steps for the biosynthesis of the chemotherapeutic agent for cancer therapy

Max Planck researchers are currently collaborating with partners in over 120 countries. In the following article they talk about their personal experiences and impressions. Alban Mariette from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam is researching how plants construct their cell walls. He is currently spending two years in Australia as part of the Melbourne-Potsdam PhD Program (MelPoPP). Here, he shares details of his experiences during the lockdown period and about his work-life balance as a PhD student. He also waxes lyrical about the awesome Australian scenery.

Drought, heat, and glaring sun. A desert habitat is one of punishing extremes. If a plant is to survive here, it must be able to endure a lot. This is especially true for algae. Together with Mark Stitt and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm near Potsdam, Haim Treves is investigating how the alga Chlorella ohadii has adapted to the extreme living conditions of the desert.

Factories of the future will be growing in fields – at least according to Ralph Bock and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm. The researchers are hoping to turn plants into production sites for substances that would otherwise be difficult and expensive to produce. One plant that has recently been somewhat scorned could experience an unexpected renaissance in pursuit of this goal.

Lothar Willmitzer, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, had never thought about the commercial application of his research. Nevertheless, he founded three companies during his career. He is particularly pleased that his research has also been able to benefit humans.

When plant pollen fertilizes an ovum, the genetic material in the nucleus and the chloroplasts must harmonize. Stephan Greiner from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, near Potsdam, would like to find out which factors in the chloroplasts prevent the interbreeding of plant species. To do this, he works with a model plant that’s not too particular when it comes to the species boundary: the evening primrose.

Plant cells are under pressure. Cell walls encase plant cells and enable them to withstand this internal pressure, called turgor. The mechanical properties of cell walls are constantly remodeled to either promote or restrict turgor driven growth. My team and I investigate how plants sense mechanical forces that affect them and how they modulate the physical properties of their cell walls to regulate their growth in response to these forces. Since most biomass on earth is composed of cell walls and their properties determine plant growth, this is an area of substantial practical importance.

Plants need to face the elements in the places they grow. However, increasingly extreme heat waves and cold snaps are now pushing even the most robust plants to their limits. We investigate how chloroplasts, the plant‘s micro solar panels, help plants to survive such extreme temperature fluctuations. In doing so, we unravel the complex interactions taking place in plant cells between the genetic material of the nucleus and of the chloroplasts. Our findings provide the foundation for breeding crops that are well equipped to cope with the coming climate changes.

Due to climate changes and the increasing demand for food and other high-value products there is a critical need for understanding the basic mechanisms controlling plant growth for crop improvement. By using a combination of genetics, systems biology approaches, high-throughput imaging and mathematical modelling, we have identified molecular key players involved in controlling plant growth in response to a fluctuating environment as a promising means to improve plant performance.

Mothers pass more genetic information to their offspring than fathers, since females transmit the cell organelles, chloroplasts and mitochondria, which contain their own genes. In the evening primrose (genus Oenothera) chloroplasts and their genes can be transmitted by the pollen of the father. By this, a conflict between the sexes becomes evident that is about whose genes succeed in transmission. By the identification of an enzyme of the fatty acid metabolism we could show for the first time how the “battle of sexes” is fought.

Understanding poor performance of offspring in comparison to their parents, known as hybrid incompatibility, gives knowledge of the first steps towards reproductive isolation and speciation. Using modern methods of genomic research, we studied three new hybrid incompatibility cases in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our results have highlighted that in addition to rapidly evolving genes, genes involved in conserved processes may underlie hybrid incompatibilities. In future, we will study how the different hybrid incompatibility genes function and what role they have in local adaptation and evolution.