2024

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.