Biología Celular Molecular (Prof. Dr. Peter Nick)

Fritz-Haber-Weg, Gbd. 30.43 (Torre de Biología), 5. suelo. e-mail. Como encontrarnos

Interview in Biospektrum

Living is Searching (Springer-Nature 2023)

Secretario

• Herr Jochen Krüger, R501, Tel. 0721-608 42142

INSTITUTE SEMINARS

la revista con más tradición de biologá celular (Springer-Nature). Nos otros la publicamos. màs...

EUCOR Project Roots of Resilience

EUCOR, the trinational assocation of Upper-Rhine universities (Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Colmar-Mulhouse, Basel) launched a call for so-called Seed Money projects. Here, partner KIT-JKIP (Islam Khattab, Peter Nick) together with the University of Basel (Pascale Flury) and the Université Haute-Alsace (Julie Chong) was successful with the project Roots of Resilience. The project tries to render grapevine more resilient against climate-change born novel fungal diseases ("Esca & Co") through improved microbial communities in the rhizosphere. The project is based on results of Kliwiresse, but also previous Upper Rhine Interreg projects, especially Vitifutur and DialogProTec. However, the central reason for the success of the proposal was the cooperation cultivated over four Interreg Upper Rhine networks. The Seed Project in turn will feed into the planned sequel project Robin Root. Planned start is February 2025, running time is two years. more...

EvoDevo of Speciation

"Species" are a central concept of biology and usually understood as unit of propagation. This species concept works neatly for animals, because mating of individuals from different species usually do not work or lead to sterile progeny (a classic example would be the mule). Plants, however, do not choose their mating partner themselves, but use insects for doing so. Moreover, plants can circumvent problems with sexuality by asexual propagation. What does "species" now mean for plants? Dr. Sascha Wetters proposed here a new concept, whereby genes that control shape or geometry of flowers are drivers of speciation. To test this idea, he cracked a hard nut - the genus Sage, with more than 1000 known species, one of the most diverse genera at all. Here, he can show that a duplication of the gene switch GLOBOSA facilitated the colonisation of the New World by larger and less asymmetric flowers that recruited novel pollinators, hummingbirds, leading to the birth of numerous new species. This allows to bridge developmental biology and evolution. This work has now been published.

217. Wetters S, Nick P (2025) B-class gene GLOBOSA – a facilitator for enriched species diversity of Salvia in the New World? Plant Biol, 10.1111/plb.70002 - pdf

 Il nuevo "Strasburger"

127 years ago Eduard Strasburger founded the textbook of botany, which appeared now in the 38. edition - this makes the "Strasburger" the biology textbook with the longest history. Peter Nick contributed a couple of 100 pages to the topics structure and function of the plant body and plant development. The "Strasburger" pursues the goal to depict the entire knowledge on plants, comprehensively, up-to-date, and at the same time filtered. Even though it had never been easier to acquire information, the problem is progressively to filter relevant from irrelevant. Textbooks are, therefore, not outdated, but more important than ever. more...

FKI

The State Teaching Award 2015 was given to Peter Nick and Mathias Gutmann. The money was used to found the Forum. Beyond faculties and disciplines, we debate here on controversial topics. In WS 2024-2025 we look at sustainability. more...

Genome of plant dolphins deciphered

When plants conquered terrestrial habitats around half a billion years aog, they had to face a hostile environment. Their success paved the way for other terrestrial life forms. Genetic changes increased the resilience of those plants. Exactly those genes are needed now to adjust our agriculture to cope with the consequences of climate change. Half a billion years are a very long time, though and it is very difficult to discriminate changes due to the new lifestyle from those that occurred due to other reasons during that very long period. Nature comes to our help with a curious phenomenon - as some mammals returned to aquatic life, also some flowering plants returned to an amphibic lifestyle. For this purpose they are able to produce different leaves that not only differ in shape, but also with respect to physiology. The Water Wisteria, Hygrophila difformis, is one of these plant dolphins and is currently investigated in the team of Dr. Jathish Ponnu from our department, who develops this plant into a new model for plant stress. Now, together with Chinese partners, he reached a key point: the genome of this species has been deciphered and the genes that are turned on our off during the transition between air and water could be identified.

Publication

Li G, Zhao X, Yang J, Hu S, Ponnu J, Kimura S, Hwang I, Torii KU, Hou H. Water wisteria genome reveals environmental adaptation and heterophylly regulation in amphibious plants. Plant Cell Environ. 2024 Jul 30. doi: 10.1111/pce.15050.

Cold Resilience from the Black Forest

Climate change is more than heat stress. The blurred seasonality means often untimely cold snaps. For the strawberry production in the Mediterranean this is turning progressively problematic. However, nature offers solutions - we just need to sustain and valorise its diversity. This was the idea behind the Gene Bank for Crop Wild Relatives initiated a bit more than a decade ago by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. Here, we were in charge for the Southwest of Germany. In frame of the project Fragananas, funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, we collaborated with partners in Egypt and were able to find some "tough guys" among German wild strawberries and use them to understand the basis of cold tolerance. A especially potent variant of the gene switch Cold Box Factor 4 induces a strong accumulation of the antifreeze protein Xero 2. With the help of the metabolomcis platform of Dr. Weinert at the Max-Rubner-Institute it was then possible to find metabolic changes that mediate cold tolerance, for instance the induction of tyrosol, the signal compound gamma butyric acid, or the accumulation of the amino acid proline. These findings do not only allow to predict the cold tolerance of strawberry, but also to improve it by introgression of the wild genes.

Press release of the KIT

Publication

209. Kanbar A, Weinert CH, Kottutz D, La Th, Abuslima E, Kabil F, Hazman M, Egert B, Trierweiler B, Kulling SE, Nick P (2024) Cold Tolerance of Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) is linked to Cold Box Factor 4 Cold and the dehydrin Xero2. J Exp Bot 75, 5857-5879 - pdf

Tumour Compound from a Mali Desert Tree

The use of plants for healing accompanied humans from their very beginnings. Among the almost half a million of species that have already been described, there are many that produce unique compounds. Especially in developing countries many people depend on plants for healing, because they cannot afford the expensive Western style medication. The tree Detarium microcarpum growing in Mali is used in traditional medicine also against breast cancer. Many anti-tumour compounds target the microtubules, which blocks the proliferation of cancer cells. We, therefore, investigated, whether this is the case for this medicinal plant from Mali. Using tobacco cells, where microtubules were labelled by a fluorescent protein, and could demonstrate that, indeed, extracts from D. microcarpum eliminated microtubules swiftly and efficiently. The effect could be localised to the alkaloid fraction. On this base it will be possible to identify the active compound in the future, not only to develop novel tumour therapies, but also to lift traditional medicine by scientific grounding on a higher level.

Publication

Dembele N, Nick P (2024) Anti‐microtubular activity of total alkaloids and aqueous extract of Detarium microcarpum a medicinal plant harvested in Mali. Protoplasma, doi 10.1007/s00709-024-02003-3 - pdf