Highlights
Golden Owl of the VSETH for Prof. Samuel C. Zeeman
The Golden Owl honours lecturers who have provided exceptional teaching and motivates them to continue with their excellent teaching. The Owl is awarded by the VSETH, ETH Zurich’s students association.
Chromatin accessibility and gene expression vary between a new and evolved autopolyploid of Arabidopsis arenosa
Thanvi, Adrian and Kirsten from our group just published a Molecular Biology and Evolution paper, describing how epigenomic and transcriptomic changes occur during polyploidy evolution in plants.
ARGONAUTE 10 allows proper miR165/6 gradient formation along the root xylem axis
A recent publication in EMBO Journal by the Voinnet group (IMPB) addresses the conundrum of how to create a linear gene expression gradient out of a radially-moving silencing small RNA in Arabidopsis.
A guide to plant siRNAs
In a recent review published in Plant Cell, Olivier Voinnet (IMPB) and his colleague Hervé Vaucheret (INRAE, Versailles) provide an in-depth and comprehensive overview of the plant siRNA landscape, emphasizing the extraordinary diversity of their biogenesis and functions.
Solving mysteries of plant small RNA movement
A publication in Plant Journal by the Voinnet group (IMPB) addresses several outstanding questions pertaining to the cell-to-cell and vascular movement of small interfering (si)RNAs in Arabidopsis.
Defective pollen tube tip-growth induces neo-polyploid infertility
A recent paper published in Science by the Bomblies group (IMPB), shows that newly formed polyploids suffer a severe defect in polar cell growth, which is essential for fertility in plants as it allows sperm to reach ovules, and provides insight into a naturally evolved solution to this challenge.
Where to start? – Initiation of starch granules
A recent article published in PNAS by the Zeeman Group (IMPB) sheds light on how starch granules initiate within the chloroplast of leaf tissue. The study identifies a key protein, 'MFP1,' as the determinant of the site of starch granule formation.
Chloroplast Biology 2023 Conference
On 26 and 27 June 2023, the "Chloroplast Biology 2023" conference, organised by the Zeeman lab, took place at the ETH Zurich.
Starch phase transition – The ‘Domino effect’
A Science Advances article, published by the Zeeman group (IMPB) in collaboration with Prof. Coralie Bompard (University Lille), shifts a long-standing paradigm: That starch crystallization is a spontaneous physical process. The work provides compelling evidence for protein factors being involved.
Shedding light on Arabidopsis seed lipid metabolism
In a recent The Plant Cell publication of the Zeeman lab (IMPB), Deslandes-Hérold and colleagues study the influence of a light-dependent biochemical pathway on seed oil accumulation using the Arabidopsis thaliana model system. They find a larger-than-anticipated effect of this pathway on the amount of oil accumulated and provide new insight into the metabolic partitioning of resources between seed storage compounds.