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Several group leaders from UPSC shared their experiences with the participants of the symposium at a panel discussion highlighting different academic journeys (photo: Anne Honsel).
End of March, the UPSC Early Career Plant Scientists Symposium took place. Six talented young researchers from around the globe were visiting UPSC, presented their research and got to know the research environment. Feedback from the participants highlighted the welcoming atmosphere and the stimulating interactions with group leaders and postdoctoral researchers.
The two-day event, held on 26-27 March, was filled with scientific and networking activities. The first day commenced with a scientific session where invited early career scientists presented their research, and several UPSC group leaders provided a brief overview of their work. This was followed by a matchmaking event with individual discussions between UPSC group leaders and the invited researchers, aimed at exploring potential collaborations.
Read more: UPSC Early Career Plant Scientists Symposium receives positive feedback from participants
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Chile is like Sweden a country with extreme climate zones. Photo: Maria E Eriksson.
In January 2026, researchers from Sweden and Chile will meet in Concepción, Chile, for the ACCESS Forum 2026. The aim is to foster networking and exchange between researchers from both countries, with focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development goals. One of the participating scientists is Maria E. Eriksson from UPSC and Umeå University. Together with Luisa Bascuñán from Universidad de Concepción, she will lead the research theme “Resilient plants for the future: Lessons learned from challenging environments” and organise a workshop.
Maria E. Eriksson, who studies how the circadian clock regulates plant growth also under adverse environmental conditions, has a long-standing collaboration with Chilean researchers. In 2015, she started even a Research Links project supported by the Swedish Research Council, that allowed her and her Chilean partner to intensify their collaboration. The focus of the research theme workshop that she will co-host with Luisa Bascuñán at the ACCESS Forum 2026 will be on current plant improvement and health approaches and discuss what is needed to tackle increasingly challenging environmental conditions.
Read more: Fostering International Collaboration for Sustainable Development
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PhD student Alice Marcon has studied flowering and seasonal growth in trees.
Spring is on its way and trees will soon flush their buds. Deciduous trees have to adjust their growth and development to the respective season, but how is this regulated? PhD student Alice Marcon set out to investigate this and characterised the function of two flowering genes that regulate not only flowering but also seasonal growth in poplar. She also created a seasonal roadmap of gene activities and identified key genes regulating bud dormancy, bud flush and flowering providing valuable information for tree breeding programmes.
- You studied flowering and seasonal growth in poplar working in Ove Nilsson’s group. What sparked your interest in this topic and how did you end up joining Ove’s group?
Alice Marcon: I believe that understanding how plants, especially trees, adapt to their environment is crucial, particularly in the face of climate change. As perennial plants, trees have to endure seasonal shifts year after year, making their ability to regulate growth and dormancy essential for survival.
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Thale cress seedlings with defective RG-II pectin dimerization (right seedling) cannot establish a full apical hook like non-modified seedlings (right seedling). The apical hook is formed when seedlings emerged from the soil to protect their sensitive leaves on top (collage: Anne Honsel).
Plant cell walls give stability to the plant, but they are not just rigid structures. The wall components dynamically interact with each other to influence growth and development. An international research team led by Rishikesh Bhalerao from SLU uncovered a new regulatory link between the plant cell wall and plant hormones. Their results were recently published in Science Advances.
When hearing about walls, one thinks of rigid structures like medieval town walls that served as protection against intruders. Plant cell walls fulfil similar defence functions, but they are not as inert and rigid as town walls. On the contrary, they are much more flexible and dynamic and play a crucial role during plant growth and development.
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Åsa Strand, Professor at the Department of Plant Physiology at Umeå University, is appointed as the first substitute for the three teacher representatives at the University Board of Umeå University (photo: Mattias Pettersson, Umeå University).
With the start of the new term of office on January 1, Åsa Strand has been appointed as a member to the University Board of Umeå University, the highest decision-making body at the university. She will serve as the first substitute for the three teacher representatives until the end of 2027.
Åsa Strand has already previously accepted various commissions of trust at Umeå University and Umeå Plant Science Centre, as well as external roles, such as with the Swedish Research Council. As teacher representatives at the University Board, her role is to ensure that the perspectives and interests of the academic staff are considered in the decision-making process.
Read more: Åsa Strand joins the University Board of Umeå University
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PhD student Sanchali Nanda (front) and her supervisor Stefan Jansson (back) at the ChloroSpec instrument at Umeå Plant Science Centre (photo: Anne Honsel).
Light drives photosynthesis, but excessive light can be harmful. Plants protect themselves by converting surplus energy in their chloroplasts into heat for dissipation. PhD student Sanchali Nanda helped validate a novel instrument that monitors the stress levels of plants and used it to gain new insights on their energy dissipation mechanisms.
- You did your PhD in Stefan Jansson’s research group at Umeå Plant Science Centre. Coming from India, how was it for you to work and live in Northern Sweden?
Sanchali Nanda: I enjoy challenges, and this was a fun challenge. On my first night in Umeå, seeing the greenhouse lights glowing was an enlightening moment - I was thrilled from the start. I arrived in August when it was still bright and sunny, but everything was new: the environment, the people and the culture. I experienced my first snowfall, skied for the first time, and even learned to cycle through winter. Coming from a rather pampered background as an Indian student, I had to become more self-reliant, managing things independently and taking responsibility not just professionally but also personally. I think these are the core lessons that I carry from my five and a half years of experience in Umeå.
Read more: Novel instrument advances research on photoprotection in plants
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PhD student Varvara Dikaya has studied how plants adjust to cold by focussing on the protein PORCUPINE (photo: Nabila El Arbi).
Plants have developed versatile processes to react to cold temperatures. Varvara Dikaya studied PORCUPINE, a protein that is part of a hub regulating responses to environmental cues like cold. In her PhD thesis, she showed that there is not just a single link between PORCUPINE and cold signalling, but multiple intertwined passes that act simultaneously.
To acquire cold resistance, plants developed complicated temperature sensing and adaptation mechanisms. Much of the research done so far to study such temperature responses focuses on changes in gene expression and on molecules that ensure cold resistance, for example amino acids, sugars and other molecules that prevent freezing. Components of the splicing machinery like the PORCUPINE protein were not part of this picture for a long time.
Read more: Untangling the multifaceted cold response in plants
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The researchers Olivier Keech and Clément Boussardon are studying pollen grains from Arabidopsis plants. Photo: Rebecca Forsberg
Scientists at Umeå University have found a way to break open the protective walls of pollen grains – one of the hardest biomaterials in the world – without damaging the inside cell and its components. This achievement opened the possibility to isolate and study mitochondria – parts of the cell essential for energy production. To their surprise, several proteins that are key for maintaining the energy production of the mitochondria, were nowhere to be found.
“Flowering plants are dependent on pollen to reproduce, and the pollen grains are very special in many ways,” says Olivier Keech, Associate Professor at the Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University and group leader at Umeå Plant Science Centre, UPSC. He explains that each pollen grain contains a tiny capsule, a cell that carries the male genetic material necessary for the next generation of plants.
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A digital representation of a human head with DNA strands and a balance scale, symbolizing the intersection of genetics and justice. Generated with AI by Thanarat, Adobe Stock.
Today is the 10th International Day for Women and Girls in Science. The goal is to highlight the need to advance gender equality and celebrate diversity in science. UPSC has been striving for gender balance already since 2007 and has currently achieved it, but the work to create a more diverse, inclusive and equitable environment continues.
When UPSC began analysing gender balance in 2007, the leadership realised that while PhD students and postdocs were fairly balanced, this was not the case at the group leader level. To maintain the balance from the PhD and postdoc level, UPSC implemented a programme to specifically support newly appointed group leaders. The idea was to address the imbalance by offering attractive conditions that motivate all young researchers to become group leaders – a strategy that has proven successful.
Read more: Working towards equity, diversity and gender balance
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PhD student Nabila El Arbi (right) successfully defended her PhD thesis that was supervised by Markus Schmid (left). The central dogma of biology states that DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins, assuming that one gene contains the information for one protein. However, RNA modifications like alternative splicing can produce multiple proteins from a single gene. Not much is known about this in plants, but PhD student Nabila El Arbi dived into the unknown and started to enlighten it.
You did your PhD in Markus Schmid's research group at Umeå Plant Science Centre. What motivated you to move to Umeå and join Markus’ group?
Nabila El Arbi: Well, to be completely honest – I was not actively looking for a PhD. I was in the final weeks of wrapping up my master’s thesis project and was confronted with the simple yet scary question: “What do you want to do now?”. By chance, somebody at a festival told another person, who then told me, about a “really good plant science centre” in Northern Sweden. That is how I found UPSC and the open PhD position in Markus’ group. When I read the project description, I thought this was really tailored to me, building up on what I focussed on during my Bachelor’s and Master’s projects. I immediately had a head full of ideas. At the time, Markus had two PhD positions available and offered me and the other candidates to visit UPSC and meet people from his group. We got along well, and this gave me an additional motivation boost for the project.
Read more: Nabila El Arbi sheds light on plant RNA regulation