Press Releases

Using the crucifer Cardamine hirsuta researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ) uncovered how enhancer evolution contributed to differences in leaf shape within this plant family. [more]

A collaborative effort by the Formosa-Jordan lab from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, the Fox lab from Duke University, USA, and the Roeder lab from Cornell University, USA, developed a new computational pipeline that enables the high-throughput quantification of ploidy, i.e., the copy number of chromosomes, across tissues from microscopy images. The study is now published in Cell Reports Methods. [more]

The European Union has reached a provisional agreement on a new regulatory framework for plants developed using new genomic techniques (NGTs). The reform modernises rules that have remained unchanged since 2001 and acknowledges the scientific progress made in precision breeding methods such as CRISPR/Cas. [more]

Plants start to flower in response to environmental signals such as daylength. This process involves a protein signal, florigen, that is made in the leaves and induces floral development at the shoot tip. Researchers in the groups of George Coupland at the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne and their collaborators have elegantly shed new light on the existing model for how florigen and two other proteins interact at the shoot apex to form the florigen activation complex (FAC), which is responsible for activating the genes required for flower formation. The findings, published in Nature, show that after movement of florigen into the shoot tip, formation of the FAC occurs on DNA in a distinct sequence of events. Also, the authors show that as well as inducing flowering, florigen has later independent functions during the formation of flowers. [more]

Leaf epidermal cells have very different sizes and ploidy levels (the number of chromosome sets), but what actually controls their size and how these cells become organized within the tissue remains unclear. A collaborative and interdisciplinary study involving imaging, quantitative analyses, and modeling has been published in PLOS Biology by the groups of Pau Formosa-Jordan at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research and Adrienne Roeder at Cornell University, which finally brings the pieces together.
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In a recent Nature Genetics publication, an international team led by Dr. Thomas Hartwig and Dr. Julia Engelhorn (Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne; Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) introduces a scalable method to map genomic regulatory regions—often referred to as “switches” for their role in controlling the timing and strength of gene expression. Until now, most research has focused on genes themselves, but this study demonstrates that many crucial trait differences originate from variation in these regulatory switches, which have long been notoriously difficult to study on a large scale. [more]

How centromeres enable a special form of reproduction [more]

Tonni Grube Andersen together with CEPLAS member Stanislav Kopriva (UoC) identifed several plant growth promoting volatiles. The study is now published in Plant communications. [more]

A study from the group of Hirofumi Nagakami at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research has shown how a versatile protein family may have helped plants colonize land. We sat down with Dr. Nagakami to learn more about this study and the work of his group in general. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Researchers from LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research have reconstructed the genomes of ten historic potato cultivars and show that they already cover 85 percent of the total variability of modern European potatoes. [more]

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research have developed an innovative system – called MetaFlowTrain – that allows the study of metabolic exchange and interactions within microbial communities under different environmental conditions. The study is now published in Nature Communications.
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Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, the University of Cologne, and the University of Copenhagen have uncovered a hidden talent of the Casparian strip—a root structure best known for acting like a plant’s security guard. It turns out this natural barrier also plays a key role in making sure legumes get the right amount of nitrogen from their bacterial partners. Their findings, now published in Science, could help researchers better understand how plants and microbes negotiate their underground business deals.
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A study led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne has shown that the ability to suppress plant immune responses is shared among many of the bacteria that live on healthy plant roots. This trait stabilizes bacterial communities, known as the root microbiota, against perturbations through the plant immune system [more]

Scientists have decoded the structure of a barley protein that provides resistance against a devastating fungal disease. Such structures could inform efforts to protect crops from plant pathogens.
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In a new study published in Nature, researchers working in the groups of Jijie Chai (Westlake University in Hangzhou, China) and Jane Parker (MPIPZ in Cologne, Germany) describe how Arabidopsis plants exert fine-control of a major immune signalling machinery rapid but restricted host cell death after pathogen recognition. [more]