Members

Charles comes from Canada and completed his PhD degree at the University of British Columbia, where he studied the regulation of NLR-mediated plant immunity. He joined the lab in 2018, and is interested in the molecular mechanisms behind the interactions between the plant immune system and bacterial root microbiota.

Marina is from Brazil and completed her PhD in Biochemistry in the Nitrogen Fixation group at the Federal University of Paraná. Part of her PhD was carried out in Gary Stacey’s lab at the University of Missouri, USA, where she studied the interaction between the plant growth-promoting bacterium Bacillus pumilus and Arabidopsis thaliana using genome-wide association studies. She joined the lab in January 2020 and will now investigate how plant carbon allocation is affected by the root microbiota.

Sabine Haigis comes from Germany and is working as technical assistant. She curates our fungal stocks and carries out barley transformation. She is also skilled in various pathogen inoculation assays.

Petra Köchner comes from Germany and is working on molecular biological experiments. Petra also curates our clone collection and Arabidopsis strain collection.

Florian comes from Germany and studied biology at RWTH Aachen University. During his bachelor thesis he conducted protein-protein interaction assays of barley MLA NLR immune receptors and their corresponding Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei (Bgh) AVRa effectors. For his master thesis, he characterized the DNA methylation landscape of Bgh to investigate how epigenetic mechanisms impact the evolutionary trajectory of this plant pathogen. He joined the lab in October 2021 as a PhD student, and is interested in characterising the cell death response mediated by CC-type NLR immune receptors.

Aaron is from Canada and completed his M.Sc. degree in Plant Pathology at Wageningen University and Research. Aaron’s M.Sc. thesis was completed in the group of Paul Schulze-Lefert at the MPIPZ where he investigated innate immunity in barley. He joined the lab as a PhD student in July 2021 and is interested in the structural and biochemical properties of NLRs.

Ka-Wai comes from Hong Kong and completed his Ph.D. work on bacterial Type III secreted effectors at the University of California, Riverside, USA. He joined the lab in 2017. He is interested in understanding the role of plant immunity in shaping the establishment of the root microbiota.

Milena comes from Germany and received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Biochemistry at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. She completed her bachelor thesis in the group of Prof. Dr. Pitter Huesgen at the Research center in Jülich, Germany. There, she was working on the substrate identification of an Arabidopsis aspartyl protease involved in plant immunity using proteomics (N-terminomics, HUNTER). During her Master’s degree, she joined the CEPLAS Graduate school program and started her Master thesis and her PhD in October 2020 working on plant-root commensal interactions for improved plant iron nutrition. Now, she is interested in identifying the underlying bacterial genetic factors and to assess whether plant and/or bacterial edaphic adaptation influences this plant-commensal interaction

Ryohei Thomas comes from Japan. He received his PhD studying plant cell biology, especially the morphological organization of ER, in Ikuko Hara-Nishimura's group at Kyoto University. His fundamental interest is how the cellular dynamics contributes to the overall fitness of the plants in natural habitats.

Jana comes from Germany and studied biology at Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. During her bachelor’s thesis she generated and tested a genome editing toolkit, which was then used to investigate the importance of a Resistance gene cluster in autoimmunity and pathogen defence during her master’s thesis (Ordon et al., Funct Integr Genomics 2019). She started her PhD in October 2018 and mainly focuses on the role of the plant innate immune system in the establishment of the root microbiota.

Julien did his PhD in the group of Hervé Sentenac at the Biochemistry & Plant Molecular Physiology (BPMP) Joint Research Unit in Montpellier, France, where he studied the molecular dialogue underpinning the establishment of the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between rhizobia and legumes. He specifically focused his attention on the ionic channels involved in electrical and calcium signaling at the root hair plasma membrane in Medicago truncatula. Julien joined the PSL group in February 2019, where he is now interested in identifying the Rhizobiales mechanisms involved in microbiota colonisation and persistence on plant roots.

Kathrin is from Germany and did her PhD in Molecular Plant Physiology at University of Erlangen, focusing on the molecular players of nutrient exchange at the maize/Ustilago maydis interface. During her postdoctoral time in the lab of Sharon Long at Stanford University, USA, she worked on stress response and transcriptional regulation in Sinorhizobium meliloti during symbiosis with Medicago sativa. She joined the lab in 2017 to decipher the role of plant exudates on the bacterial community associated with the legume Lotus japonicus.

Dongli studied Plant Pathology at Nanjing Agricultural University and Wageningen University. He started his PhD at the MPIPZ in 2017 as joint PhD student in the laboratories of Jijie Chai and Paul Schulze-Lefert. He is interested in unravelling the structural basis of pre- and post-activation of NLR immune receptor complexes.