Inaugural lecture of Prof. Till Ischebeck: Green oil – How plants (could) produce all the lipids we need

Today, Prof. Till Ischebeck, successor in spe of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, gave his official inaugural lecture as a Professor of Plant Biotechnology. The Dean of the Faculty of Biology welcomed him as Heisenberg professor who joined us with his own Heisenberg grant from DFG. Till described his research on plant lipid droplets, the neglected organelles in which plants store their precious energy resources in the form of triglycerides, especially in seeds from which we can win the healthy oils for our daily diets. Most of what is known today on the protein machinery associated with these lipid droplets comes from Till’s work. As plant lipids not only play nutritional roles but can also have antimicrobial activities and are known as signalling compounds, his speculations concerning their possible involvement in e.g. plant-pathogen interactions raises exciting perspectives. But he not only reported on work done and achievements accomplished in fundamentally understanding the physiological roles of lipid droplets, he also extended his talk towards future biotechnological opportunities to exploit them as subcellular production spaces for hydrophobic compounds. One of the examples he gave was the introduction of genes from salmon required for the biosynthesis of precious omega-3-fatty acids which plants cannot naturally produce. During the past few months, Till has already started building his future research team at our institute, and the remainders of his past team in Göttingen came to his lecture, too, to celebrate with him and us until deep into the night.