Wednesday last week was a special day for Regina Gratz, researcher in Torgny Näsholm’s group and employed at the Department of Plant Physiology and Forest Genetics at UPSC and SLU. The King handed her over a scholarship from the King Carl XVI Gustaf 50th Anniversary Fund for Science, Technology and the Environment. Regina Gratz will use the scholarship to study how nitrogen fixing bacteria can be stimulated so that in the long run the usage of mineral fertilization can be reduced.
Thirteen scholarships were granted in total. The awardees did not apply but were nominated and the names of the awardees were already announced in the end of April in connection with the H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf’s birthday. The official ceremony took place last week, on May 25 in the Royal Palace.
Regina Gratz’s project is based on results that organic nitrogen can stimulate biological nitrogen fixation. Together with researchers from the University of Hohenheim in Germany, she plans to identify the molecular mechanisms underlying this observed positive effect.
The King Carl XVI Gustaf 50th Anniversary Fund for Science, Technology and Environment exists since 1996. It was founded to celebrate His Majesty’s 50th birthday and aims on promoting research, technological development and enterprises that contribute to a sustainable use of natural resources and the maintenance of biodiversity. Especially young scientists working in Sweden are promoted.
Official news from the Swedish Royal Court (only in Swedish)
How do forest management strategies that aim on improving plant growth influence the fungal community? Andreas Schneider, PhD student in Nathaniel Street´s group at Umeå Plant Science Centre, has contributed to the development of new sequence analysis methods that make it easier to study fungal communities. He will defend his PhD thesis on Wednesday, 1st of June 2022 at Umeå University.
Studying fungal communities in the forest soil is very challenging. The mushrooms seen in the forest in autumn are just made by some of the fungi to spread their spores. The most time of their lifecycle fungi are hidden in the soil or inside of the roots of their host plants. Recently developed advanced sequencing techniques offer many new possibilities and Andreas Schneider and his colleagues used these advances to develop automated bioinformatic tools that allow to study the dynamic and diversity of fungal communities in the soil.
“Many of the methods used to study fungi today are indirect. We take a soil sample, extract DNA from it and see to which species this DNA might belong to,” explains Andreas Schneider. “We used these methods in some of our studies, but one problem is that you do not know if the DNA comes from fungi that are dead or from some that are alive and active. That is why we used and further developed another method that is also indirect but that shows how active the fungi are. The great thing is that this can tell us what the fungi are up to, which genes are being expressed.”
To test their method, the researchers analysed how nitrogen addition affects the fungal community. Swedish forests are usually low in nitrogen and conifer trees compensate for this limitation by establishing the symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi. The trees deliver carbon to the fungi and receive nitrogen in return. For seedlings on reforestation sites, it is crucial to establish the connection with the fungi to improve their chances to survive.
“Nitrogen addition, especially in high doses, is already known to change the fungal community in the soil quite a lot. Our experiments show that small amounts of organic nitrogen fertilization do not affect the fungal community but can improve the survival and growth rates of seedlings,” says Andreas Schneider. “This was true for seedlings coming from nurseries and also for seeds that were directly placed on the field site. We still need to follow up on the seedling growth rates over a longer period of time and for more different local conditions, but the current results are very promising.”
In a different approach, Andreas Schneider and his colleagues analysed why nitrogen addition inhibits the degradation of lignin in forest soils. Lignin is the component in dead plant material that is decomposed the most slowly by white-rot fungi. The researchers could show that nitrogen addition affects chemical processes in the soil and that this can have a negative impact on the efficiency of white-rot fungi.
They could also confirm that the composition of the fungal community associated with tree roots is changed on sites with high nitrogen fertilization favouring nitrogen tolerant fungi species. This can be caused both by soil chemistry changes and by a reprogramming of the mycorrhizal symbiosis from the side of the host tree.
“We could show that our methods are working and are useful to study dynamic changes in the fungal community”, thinks Andreas Schneider. “The biggest limitation now is the lack of genetic information for most fungal species, but we and many others are working on that. I am sure that in the future, this new knowledge and these methods will help us to evaluate even better how different forest management strategies influence fungal activity and biodiversity.”
About the public defence:
Andreas Schneider, Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University, will defend his PhD thesis on Wednesday, 1st of June 2022. Faculty opponent will be Colin Averill, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The thesis was supervised by Nathaniel Street. Andreas Schneider was part of the PhD Research School in Forest Genetics, Biotechnology and Breeding and collaborated for his PhD project with Holmen Skog.
Title of the thesis: Perturbance and stimulation - using nitrogen addition and high throughput sequencing to study fungal communities in boreal forests
For more information, please contact:
Andreas Schneider
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
Email:
The Gesellschaft für Biochemie and Molekularbiologie (GBM) gives out every year the FEBS Anniversary Prize to acknowledge a senior researcher under 40 years of age for outstanding achievements in the field of biochemistry and Molecular Biology or related sciences. This year, Peter Marhavý, group leader at UPSC, is receiving the prize and is invited to give a talk at The Biochemistry Global Summit in July in Lisbon, Portugal.
It was last week, when Peter Marhavý was informed by FEBS, the Federation of European Biochemical Societies, that he will be awarded with this years’ FEBS Anniversary Prize. Peter Marhavý joined UPSC as new group leader in 2020 after postdocs at The Institute of Science and Technology Austria and at the University of Lausanne. He and his group want to understand how plant roots respond to wounds with special focus on cell-to-cell communication.
“I am very happy that my scientific contribution is appreciated, and I am extremely honoured to have received such a distinguished prize", says Peter Marhavý who works as Assistant Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
FEBS is one of the largest molecular biology societies in Europe. The FEBS Anniversary Prize will be hand over during the IUBMB-FEBS-PABMB Congress 2022 in Lisbon, The Biochemistry Global Summit. It comprises a certificate and 2000€ and is given out by GBM since the 10th anniversary of FEBS.
Link to the press release from FEBS: https://www.febs.org/news/febs-anniversary-prizes-2022/
For more information, please contact:
Peter Marhavý
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email:
Twitter: @pmarhavy
https://www.upsc.se/peter_marhavy
How do soil properties and microorganisms in the soil influence seedling growth? David Castro, PhD student in Vaughan Hurry’s group at UPSC and SLU showed in his PhD thesis that understanding this complex relationship between the three partners can help to optimize biodiversity-friendly forest management and to get a better picture about the ecology of endemic species. David Castro will defend his PhD thesis at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, SLU, on the 24th of May.
During your PhD, you were funded by a scholarship that you got from Chile. That is very unusual for a PhD student in Sweden. What motivated you to apply for that scholarship and come to Umeå to do your PhD in Vaughan Hurry’s group at UPSC?
In 2015, me and my wife came to Umeå together with Cristian Ibáñez to work for a month with Maria Eriksson. We both fell in love with Umeå and the facilities at UPSC are amazing. It was also the time when I was preparing the papers to apply for the fellowship in Chile. I read about Vaughan Hurry’s research on suboptimal environments which was close to what I was working on during my Master thesis. I met with Vaughan, and he agreed on supporting my application for the fellowship which I luckily also received. It took then still one and a half years and many nerves until all papers were ready that I could finally come and start my PhD in Vaughan Hurry’s group. I am really happy that it all worked out and that I now can defend my thesis.
The title of your thesis starts with the question “Who comes first?” and mentions later the plant-microbiome-soil continuum. Can you answer the question now and why do you call it “continuum”?
“Who comes first” is rather a rhetorical question. The goal of my thesis was to understand the links between the plant, the microorganisms in the soil and the soil itself. We assessed plant growth and soil characteristics and used advanced sequencing techniques and bioinformatics methods to analyse how the plant and the microorganism, especially fungi, react to their environment. All three components are important and feedback each other. By allocating carbon to attract beneficial microbial partners, the plant’s roots modify locally the fungal and bacteria composition and also soil characteristics like for example soil particle aggregation, pH value and carbon content. Fungi and bacteria also allocate and move nutrients. Then there are also the physical and chemical characteristics of the soil which change during the year depending for example on the water content which is affecting the nutrient availability. That is why we cannot say who comes first. Every of the three partners influences continuously the other partners in a very complex manner and form together a kind of unit or “continuum”.
What do you consider as the major outcome from your studies?
One part of my thesis was on Prosopis species that are partly endemic in Chile but very invasive in other parts of the world and therefore of ecological interest. In Chile, Prosopis is growing partly on soil with very particular characteristics like for example in the Atacama Desert. Our experiments showed that when Prosopis seedlings manage to recruit beneficial fungal partners, they grow well in various kinds of soils except of in soil from the Atacama Desert which is very salty. This counts even for seedlings of Prosopis tamarugo which is growing very isolated in the Atacama Desert. The other parts of my thesis focussed on Scots pine and Norway spruce which are of economic importance here in Sweden. We could show that small amounts of nitrogen fertilization improve plant growth but only very minorly affects soil ecology and the fungal composition. Strong nitrogen fertilization has a positive effect on plant growth but strongly impairs the microbiota and also the soil ecology which can have a major impact on forest biodiversity.
What was the most unexpected result you got during your PhD?
We were expecting that Prosopis tamarugo which is growing in the Atacama Desert to be very stress tolerant but that was not the case. Actually, it showed to be a kind of weak seedling which had problems to recruit fungal partners during our experiments. Instead, the seedlings recruited many bacterial partners and we think that this was to partially compensate for the lack of fungi. They survived significantly less in its native soil that we used for our experiments. This was surprising because they have the potential to grow in this soil. Another species that we worked with, Prosopis chilensis, managed to recruit fungi even in soil from the beach but not Prosopis tamarugo which is growing in the most toxic soil in the desert. Our hypothesis is that the individuals, that are growing in the Atacama Desert, established themselves there when it was not as arid as it is now - probably about 100 years ago. The trees or bushes form a taproot which goes very deep into the soil and can reach the ground water. Once this root is established, they can survive also in such an extreme climate like in the Atacama Desert but for a seedling this environment is too harsh.
What was the biggest challenge you faced during your PhD?
Beside suddenly start working in English, it was very hard to learn bioinformatics. I knew a few things from before, but the work here was a different level. I got a lot of help from the people from the Bioinformatics facility at UPSC and from my colleagues. It took time and I followed many courses but now I feel proficient and confident to do bioinformatic analyses and add these skills to my CV.
What are you planning to do now?
I do like to live in Umeå and I would like to stay here even though the winter can be tough. I would also like to keep working with soil ecology and maybe include more the bacterial perspective as we focussed more on the fungal site during my PhD. There is not much done on bacterial soil ecology in the forestry context and I would like to work more on that. I would also like to reanalyse some of the data that we got focussing more on bacteria to see if we can get out more information that we have not seen yet. That is why I am currently looking for a postdoc.
About the public defence:
David Castro, Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, will defend his PhD thesis on Tuesday, 24th of May 2022. Faculty opponent will be Barbara Hawkins, Centre for Forest Biology, University of Victoria, Canada. The thesis was supervised by Vaughan Hurry. The dissertation will be live broadcasted via Zoom.
Title of the thesis: Who comes first? Implications of the plant-microbiome-soil continuum feedback on plant performance
Link to the thesis: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/27682/
For more information, please contact:
David Castro
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email:
Twitter: DavidCastroMor6
What allows conifer trees to stay green during winter when temperatures are low but solar radiation is high? Pushan Bag, PhD student in Stefan Jansson’s group at Umeå Plant Science Centre, showed that conifers have evolved special mechanisms that prevent damage to their photosynthetic machinery. He will defend his PhD thesis at the Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University, on the 20th of May.
What led you come to Umeå and start your PhD on winter acclimation of conifer trees in Stefan Jansson’s group at UPSC?
Pushan Bag: I was working on photosynthetic acclimation of algae in my master’s at the University of Hyderabad in India. We were investigating the effect of salt stress on photosynthesis by using different salts and growing algae under controlled conditions. For my PhD, I did not want to work with “artificial” controlled conditions but instead I wanted to understand natural adaptations under “real” conditions. At that time, Stefan had a PhD position focussing on conifer trees growing in boreal forests. These forests are one of the harshest environments for plants and that was interesting me. So, I applied and came here in 2017.
How did you acclimatise to the Nordic winter?
Pushan Bag: Well, I arrived here on the 17th of February 2017, and February is the coldest time of the year in Umeå. On the very next day after I arrived, I had to collect samples from the forest behind the SLU building. It was fun! To be honest, I love the Nordic winter and the snow, probably because I am from Kolkata and we do not see winter temperature dropping below 5°C. Here in Umeå, I can do some winter sports, which I could not do back in Kolkata.
You worked with Norway spruce and Scots pine and followed the changes that happen in their needles throughout the year, but you set a special focus on spring. What is so special with this season?
Pushan Bag: Spring in the Nordic climate is very different than spring in any other parts of the world. Air temperatures remain well below zero – we measured even -25 °C in February and March 2018 -, while the sun shines very bright. This makes acclimation extremely tough. Sun light drives photosynthetic reactions, but freezing temperatures make it difficult to conduct those photosynthetic reactions. Another problem the plants face is that reactive oxygen species are generated under such high solar radiation and they can damage the photosynthetic machinery.
What is the major outcome from your studies? Can you explain why conifer needles can stay green throughout the year?
Pushan Bag: We discovered that conifers possess a kind of “spill-over” mechanism to protect their photosystems from energy overload. These are the functional units where photosynthesis takes place. The structure of the inner membranes in the chloroplast is changed during winter so that the two photosystems are in physical contact with each other. This is a kind of short cut that allows direct energy transfer from photosystem II to I which is normally not possible. As far as I know, this “spill-over” mechanism was not reported before for any other vascular plant. Conifers are pretty unique in this sense!
What was the most unexpected result you got during your PhD?
Pushan Bag: We found another mechanism that conifer needles have developed to protect their needles from damage by reactive oxygen species. These results are not published yet but they were really unexpected. We hope the paper will be accepted soon.
What was the biggest challenge you faced during your PhD?
Pushan Bag: I think the biggest challenge for me was to learn that in science multiple possibilities can be correct at the same time. Plant species are very different from each other. They have evolved different regulatory ways and they can respond to the same stimuli in different ways. We often tend to generalise mechanisms and functions based on results from one model plant. However, like in our case, it can help to look on different contrasting possibilities to understand a natural phenomenon and maybe discover some new mechanisms.
You recently received a long-term postdoctoral fellowship from the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization and will start working with Professor Barry Bruce at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. What do you think will you miss most from UPSC and Umeå?
Pushan Bag: Everything!!! I will most certainly miss my friends here in Umeå and also the working culture at UPSC, but I will take all my memories with me and I am looking forward to my new project.
About the public defence:
Pushan Bag, Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University, will defend his PhD thesis on Friday, 20th of May 2022. Faculty opponent will be Francis Andre Wollman from the Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology (IBPC), Laboratory of Membrane and Molecular Physiology of Chloroplast at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France. The thesis was supervised by Stefan Jansson.
Title of the thesis: How could Christmas trees remain ever green? Photosynthetic acclimation of Scots pine and Norway spruce needles during winter
Link to Pushan Bag's PhD thesis
Further reading
For more information, please contact:
Pushan Bag
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
Email:
Twitter: @BagPushan
How does pollen look like that causes allergies? Which plants have people eaten thousand years ago? Why are plants interesting for space research? On Saturday, 21st of May, Umeå Plant Science Centre together with Curiosum is arranging a day filled with knowledge and interactive activities around plant and plant research. The event will take place at Curiosum, Umeå University.
The aim of the Fascination of Plants Day is to put the fascinating world of plants in the spotlight and to remind people that plants and plant research are important for developing a society that is both economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.
"Plant research does not usually receive as much attention as for example medical research, but it is very important in meeting all the challenges we face currently", says Anne Honsel, project manager and communication officer at Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) that belongs to Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. "On this day, we do not want to focus too much on challenges. We instead want to show that plant research is very exciting, and I hope that everyone who visits us will have a fun and fascinating day."
Umeå Plant Science Centre coordinates the event, which takes place at Curiosum in Umeå. Many young and enthusiastic plant scientists will share their knowledge and offer fun and interesting short lectures and interactive experiments at fifteen different stations for the whole family.
In addition, Bonsai sällskapet will show bonsai from forest trees and the Friends of Arboretum Norr will present the diversity of trees and shrubs that grow at the Arboretum in Baggböle and that originate from different parts of the world.
"We of course want to show what we do in our research at UPSC, but that is only part of the big picture. That is why we are also inviting researchers outside of UPSC and other parties to participate to show the diversity of the plant world and everything that is connected with it," says Anne Honsel.
About the event:
When: Saturday, 21 May, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Curiosum, Umeå Arts Campus, Östra Strandgatan 32, Umeå
Read more about all the activities on Fascination of Plants Day on May 21
About the Fascination of Plants Day:
Fascinating Plants Day is organised in Umeå by Umeå Plant Science Centre together with Curiosum, Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. It is an international event that is celebrated all over the world. More than 500 scientific institutions, universities and botanical gardens in more than 50 countries will open their doors to visitors.
For more information, please contact:
Anne Honsel
Public Relations Officer
e-mail:
phone: +46 (0)70 285 6657
Text: Ingrid Söderbergh
Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundet announced this week that Petra Marhava, new group leader at UPSC, will receive a prize for young, outstanding researchers. The prize is assigned to the Faculty of Forest Sciences at SLU and is given out once per year.
Petra Marhava started to work at UPSC in September 2020 as researcher affiliated with Stéphanie Robert’s group at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology. Since this month, she is officially group leader at UPSC and is now starting to set up her own research group which will investigate how plants deal with temperature stress.
Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet motivated their choice with Petra Marhava’s exceptionally well publishing record in high-ranking journals and her successful grant applications. End of 2021, she managed to get funding from the Swedish Research Council and a very prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). They also highlighted in their motivation that Petra Marhava’s research covers a cutting-edge topic with respect to climate change and expected temperature variations.
Every year, Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet, which is a scientific academy based in Umeå, is handing out prizes for outstanding research and cultural commitment. The academy awards in total six prizes to young researchers, a cultural prize, the “Margareta och Eric Modigs” prize that is assigned to the Medical Faculty of Umeå University, a prize for a young artist from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, a prize for a young musician from the School of Music in Piteå and the “Samfundets stora pris”.
All prize winners awarded by the Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet in 2022 (only in Swedish)
More information about Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet
More information about Petra Marhava’s ERC project
For more information, please contact:
Petra Marhava
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email:
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 8628
Twitter: @MarhavaPetra
The European Commission awarded Muhammad Shahzad Anjam with one of the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) postdoctoral fellowships. This funding allows him to continue his research on how plants react to mechanical damage caused by nematodes, microscopic plant parasites. Muhammad Shahzad is working in Peter Marhavy’s group at the Umeå Plant Science Centre and SLU.
The Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship programme is very competitive. What was motivating you to apply there?
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam: The Marie Curie fellowship is very prestigious and offers very generous funding for the period of the fellowship but also much more. It comprises a career development package including training events, collaborations through secondments, opportunities for networking and outreach programs to reach out to a broader audience. Keeping all these aspects in mind, I was highly motivated to apply for the fellowship to excel in my career.
How does it feel to be among the 14 percent that received a grant?
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam: Surely, these are very exciting moments. Not only it is now a landmark in my CV but also gives me confidence about the quality of my proposed research project and the way we designed it. I also feel very grateful to Peter Marhavy who provided me with constant support and encouragement during the whole course of the application process.
What do you plan to do in your project?
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam: The project is about plant-parasitic cyst nematodes which are major threat to the agricultural production. The nematodes attack on the roots of the host plant. They destroy several cell layers when entering the root before they select one cell close to the nutrient rich tissues where they build up a specialized feeding structure – the syncytium – and start feeding. My project focusses on how root’s various cell files respond to the damage that is caused by the nematode when invading the root. We want to resolve cellular defence responses by mimicking nematode injury using a very fine laser beam to damage one single root cell in a controlled manner and analyse tissue-specific responses using multidisciplinary state-of-the-art techniques.
Will you perform all your work at UPSC or are you also planning short-term secondments somewhere else?
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam: Most of the experiments and bioinformatic analyses, we will perform using facilities available at UPSC. However, I will travel to the Department of Ecophysiology at the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany (IZMB), University of Bonn in Germany. The group is specialized in using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to analyse the biochemistry of plant-based biopolymers that modify the cell wall interfaces according to the environmental cues. Here, I will analyse compositional changes in various plant biopolymers which create physical barriers against invading pathogens after inducing controlled injury using laser ablation.
You started at UPSC in the beginning of 2021. What was motivating you to join UPSC?
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam: I was inspired by Peter Marhavy’s research group which investigates short distance communication in response to wound stress in plants, focussing on cellular resolution and by the excellent working environment at UPSC. About 30 research groups are working at UPSC on various aspects of plant biology and all researchers share common laboratories, instruments, kitchens and offices. This creates a great interactive atmosphere to discuss and exchange ideas. By having seminars and discussions on relevant as well as interdisciplinary topics, I can learn a lot about the different fields. So overall, a very healthy and balanced working environment at UPSC encouraged me to join the institute. Further, I found that at UPSC, researchers from all around the world make it a very cosmopolitan and multicultural environment to work.
Do you have some tips for other young researchers applying for similar competitive fellowships?
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam: Yes, sure. I think, chances of obtaining a fellowship are significantly increased if we understand the core objectives of the awarding agency and formulate the application accordingly. For MSCA fellowships, the purpose is of course on a high-quality research project, but it also asks to enhance independence and leadership skills of the researcher. Therefore, designing an innovative project package using advanced technology, ambitiousness, interdisciplinary approaches and networking through secondments will enormously help to hunt a fellowship.
Project title: The plant’s internal cellular sensing and response measures to mechanical breach
Link to the official news from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) are supporting 1156 post-doctoral researchers chosen from a total of 8356 in the 2021 Postdoctoral Fellowship call. The goal of the fellowship which is part of Horizon Europe is to increase the competence and skills of the postdoctoral fellows to improve their career prospects in academia and beyond. Emphasis is also put on interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral and international experience as well as on enhancing networking and communication capacities with the science community and with the general public.
For more information, please contact:
Muhammad Shahzad Anjam
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email:
Twitter: @shahzadbio
This week, the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization announced the 65 young researchers that were chosen for a long-term postdoctoral fellowship. One of them and the only one from Sweden is Pushan Bag, PhD student in Stefan Jansson’s group at Umeå Plant Science Centre, Umeå University. He plans to use the grant to join Professor Barry Bruce’s group at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville to work on protein transport during chloroplast development.
Currently, Pushan Bag is working on finalizing his PhD thesis which he will defend in May this year at the Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University. The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) fellowship provides him with support for three years and will allow him to broaden his knowledge by working on a new research field in a new research environment.
“Human Frontiers was established in 1989 and is one of the oldest and prestigious postdoctoral grants in life science. I am delighted to receive this grant even before I have officially defended my PhD thesis”, says Pushan Bag. “I am immensely grateful to Umeå University and Umeå Plant Science Centre for the excellent guidance and support during my PhD, which helped me to successfully secure this grant.”
In Stefan Jansson’s group, Pushan Bag is working on how trees adjust their photosynthesis during winter to cope with the cold temperatures. He will continue to work on photosynthesis in the group of Professor Barry Bruce but will move on to a completely different aspect. Using a multifaceted systemic approach, he wants to study the dynamics of transporter proteins that are localised in the chloroplast membrane and facilitate the selective import of other proteins into the chloroplast.
“During my master’s degree at University of Hyderabad in India around 2014, I heard a lecture by Barry Bruce in a conference. While working with chloroplast proteins during my PhD in Stefan Jansson’s group, I became curious on how cells sort proteins to a specific cell organelle,” explains Pushan Bag. “So, I thought of working on chloroplast protein targeting and the first name that came into my mind was Barry Bruce’s. That is why I approached him last year, explained my project idea and showed interest in joining his lab.”
The aim of the International HFSP Organization is to promote international collaboration and training in cutting-edge, interdisciplinary life science research. A total of 493 applications have been received for this year’s HFSP fellowship programme. The 65 chosen fellows are expected to move on to a new field of research in a laboratory in a new country. They will receive a financial package including living, research and travel allowance but also become part of the HFSP network.
“In every step of my PhD I enjoyed the freedom of developing my thoughts and continuing my research in the direction I felt attracted to while Stefan Jansson guided me very carefully all along the way,” says Pushan Bag. “This motivated me to apply for an independent postdoc grant that could provide me with the same freedom and further shape my future in my own way but under the umbrella of an experienced coach.”
Project title: "Assembly, dynamics, and plasticity of plastid translocon biogenesis"
Link to the press release from the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization
For more information, please contact:
Pushan Bag
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
Email:
Twitter: @BagPushan
Is it possible to improve wood quality without cutting down on yield? Stéphane Verger, group leader at UPSC, SLU, wants to understand how wood fibres grow during wood formation and which role mechanical forces play in this process. He hopes that this knowledge will help to improve wood quality in fast growing trees. The Novo Nordisk Foundation awarded him recently with an Emerging Investigator Grant and he will use this money to expand his research to aspen.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation granted your project belatedly because one of the firstly chosen applicants had to reject the grant. How did you feel when you got to know that your project got approved lately?
Stéphane Verger: That was an amazing and completely unexpected news! Overall, this is really a great opportunity for me to strongly boost the research in my lab and in particular kick-start a new branch of my research focusing on the study of wood fibres and mechanical signalling during wood formation.
What do you plan to do with this grant?
Stéphane Verger: There are mainly three parts. First, we will study some of the fundamental biology behind wood formation down to the cellular and sub-cellular level. The goal is to characterize how wood and more specifically wood fibres grow “live”. This is particularly challenging since wood growth takes place very deep within the stem. So, we will develop new methods that will allow us to observe wood growth in “live” samples. We will also mechanically stimulate wood forming tissues and study how they perceive this stimulation and react. In the second part, we want to identify the genes that are responsible for mechanical signal responses during wood formation as well as those controlling wood fibre length and wood mechanical properties. Finally, we will use these genes to generate new trees and study if and how modifications of these genes can improve fibre and wood quality. Providing that we manage to genetically improve wood quality in some of these trees, they might be used later on in forestry but first of all, all trees will serve to better understand wood formation in general.
How does this project connect to your ongoing research?
Stéphane Verger: Since my PhD, I have developed a strong expertise in plant cell and developmental biology as well as plant biomechanics, in particular concerning the question of how cells stick together, called cell-cell adhesion. When starting my independent research group at UPSC, I continued to study cell-cell adhesion in plants and how it may be controlled by mechanical signalling. We are employing highly interdisciplinary approaches combining biology and physics but focus so far on the model species Arabidopsis thaliana which is an herbaceous plant. Now, we want to make use of our expertise and knowledge and transfer it to the tree species aspen, to better understand wood formation.
Why do you think this information is important?
Stéphane Verger: Wood formation is a fascinating developmental process to study, and it is still largely underexplored. I am mainly interested in fundamental discoveries, but I think there is also a major societal need for this research. A large majority of the materials and consumables of our everyday life derive from fossil-based resources, which is not sustainable in many regards. New regulations throughout the world push companies and consumers to switch back to bio-based materials. Recent developments have shown that products from wood and wood fibres could soon substitute almost any fossil-based material but there are environmental concerns regarding the current rate of forest harvesting. We need to find long term solutions that do not compromise ecosystems and ensure a sustainable production of high-yield and also high-quality bio-based raw material.
I think there may be at least two realistic ways to solve this issue: 1) to improve growth rate of trees that make high quality wood but grow slowly, or 2) to improve wood quality of trees that grow fast but have low quality wood. These two properties (growth rate and wood quality) appear to act largely “antagonistic” so far but if we understand how “wood quality” and “wood growth” are controlled, we can maybe start to uncouple these two properties and make wood that grows fast and has high quality. With this project we hope to understand how “wood quality” is regulated and test the effect of modifying this regulation in trees that already grow fast.
What motivated you to become a researcher?
Stéphane Verger: I like biology and to understand how things work. I really didn’t know if I wanted to go into research until my master’s degree, but I did some internships in research labs and I realized that I really enjoyed it! So, I did a PhD, a post doc, and then got very lucky to get the position I have now.
What do you like about working at UPSC?
Stéphane Verger: I really like that we have a lot of shared resources, both in terms of equipment and expertise. I think that was extremely helpful for starting my group. I also like how international it is and that there is a very good and friendly atmosphere in general.
More about Stéphane Verger's research and his new project
Stéphane Verger is researcher at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and started his research group at UPSC in January 2019. He and his group study how cells in a tissue attach to each other, also called cell adhesion. They are focusing on the physical stress that occurs when cells grow and use interdisciplinary approaches including biophysical tools, advanced microscopy, and computational modelling.
In the new project funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation they will focus on wood formation in aspen. During this process, the tips of wood fibre cells, that make up the bulk of the wood, elongate by squeezing in between adjacent cells - a mechanism that requires a tight control of cell adhesion. It is also known that the region of the trunk in which the wood is being formed is under high mechanical compression, and this may serve as a signal regulating wood formation. Very much about this regulation is still unknown and Stéphane Verger and his group will work on understanding these processes better. They think that this knowledge might contribute to improve wood quality in fast growing trees without impairing the yield.
Project title:
GoodFib: Establishment of trees with high-yield and high-quality wood fibers for more sustainable improved feedstock
News from Novo Nordisk Foundation about their Research Leader Programme 2021
More information about the Research Leader Programme of Novo Nordisk Foundation
For questions, please contact:
Stéphane Verger
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email:
Twitter: @StephaneVrg
https://www.upsc.se/stephane_verger