From the 23rd to the 27th of July some of our group members attended the SMBE 2023 (Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution), which this year happened in Ferrara, Italy.
Prof. Juliette de Meaux gave a talk titled "Interspecies introgression in low diversity endangered species: hybrid breakdown or potential for a supergenotype?", where she gave an insight on how hybridization can promote adaptation.
Neda Rahnamae, Lina Abdelwahed, and Nhu Tran, some of our PhD students, presented posters. In the picture, we have Neda presenting her poster titled "Genetic architecture of phenotypic differences between endangered floodplain Arabis species".
Mohsen recently joined our group as a PosDoc fellow. Previously, he was exploring the natural variation of gene regulatory networks at the New York University. He aims at uncovering the potential regulatory role of non-functional transcription factor (TF) binding sites by combining gene expression information, ChIP-seq data, and population variations for flowering time and seed dormancy using FLC TF.
Our PhD student Yasar started her field experiment in Biebesheim am Rhein at the end of October. Together with around 30 students she planted more than 5000 Arabis seedlings in a floodplain meadow close to the Rhine. We keep our fingers crossed that she will be able to collect a lot of interesting data from these plants in the coming years!
Welcome to our new PostDoc Leen Abraham. She will be working with us on disentangeling the mode of gene expression inheritance by integrating population genetics and transcriptomics in Arabidopsis lyrata. Previously, she has focused on the evolution of gene expression regulation in plant fungal pathogens and was located at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland.
We are excited to work with you, Leen!
Welcome to our new PhD student Renan Granado Chaves. He started his PhD with us in the beginning of November and will investigate the gene-specific potentials across changing environments in A. thaliana using a comparative analysis. Before, Renan was working climate change signatures in Fagus sylvatica L., using population genomic diversity in coorporation with the Senckenberg Museum für Naturschutz in Görlitz.
Anna Hakimzadeh successfully defended her bachelor thesis:
"Wie Umweltfaktoren die Etablierung von Arabidopsis thaliana in der Stadt beeinflussen"
We wish you all the best for you future career!
Welcome to our new PhD student Nhu Tran. She started her PhD in the beginning of October and will investigate the contribution of phenotypic and molecular dominance variance to plant fitness in Arabidopsis lyrata.
Abdul eagerly extended our list of attended conferences for this year. In the last weeks he went to Prague, Czech Republic, for the Student Conference of Plant Biology, and to Bamberg, Germany, to take part in the Conference of the International Society of Plant Anaerobiosis.
Welcome to our new PhD student Yasar Özoglan. She started her PhD in the beginning of August and will investigate adaptation via gene flow in endangered Arabis floodplain species.
After two years of Covid break, the last weeks have been very productive in terms of in-person conference visits, presentations, poster sessions and discussions with other scientists from all over the world.
Juliette and Lea joined the Gordon Research Conference for Salt and Water Stress (GRC) in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. Justine attended Petit Pois Déridé 2022 in Villeneuve d'Ascq, France, and Neda participated in the European Meeting for PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB27) taking place in Espoo, Finland.
