Guest speaker: Professor Bernd Muller-Rober
Institute: University of Potsdam, Germany
Wednesday, October 30
11:00 a.m. -12:00 noon
Level 0 Auditorium 015, between Ibn Al-Haytham and Ibn Sina (buildings 2 and 3)
Abstract:
The control of gene expression is fundamental to almost all biological processes and requires the action of specific DNA-binding proteins, so-called transcription factors (TFs), which interact with cis-regulatory motifs in the promoters of target genes. TFs and their targets form gene regulatory networks (GRNs) that function in development- and condition-specific ways and are often key elements of regulatory feed-back or feed-forward loops. Our group uses a combination of experimental and computational methods to unravel the roles of TFs for life span control, abiotic stress tolerance, and organ size regulation in plants. A major focus of our activity lies on the analysis of NAC transcription factors, several of which are rapidly and strongly induced by reactive oxygen species (ROS), including hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), indicating a role in ROS signalling.
We identified target genes for various Arabidopsis NAC TFs giving insights into their regulatory circuits and biological functions. I will present our general working strategy and give specific examples for selected NAC TFs. Our group also initiated a synthetic biology project to establish synthetic chromosomes in yeast with integrated GRNs (based on plant NACs and bacterial TAL effectors) for future applications in biotechnology. I will shortly present the current status of the project.
Biography:
Professor Bernd Mueller-Roeber is Head of Department Molecular Biology, University of Potsdam, Germany; a member of Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences; and a member of acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering, Germany. His research interests include: plant genomics, plant life span control, growth regulation, transcription factors, gene regulatory networks, abiotic stress tolerance, systems biology, and synthetic biology. To read more, including recent publications, please click here
