News of the Plant Evolutionary Genomics Group

On Monday, 22.07.2019 at 7:00 PM, Susann will give her first public outreach lecture about parasitic plants in the SciencePub Münster at Ratskeller (Prinzipalmarkt 8). It will be the first talk centering around plants in the four-year history of this outreach program. She will explain why it takes supercomputers to unravel the mysteries of parasitic plants and why it needs diet coke to cultivate some parasites in the lab. Details: http://science-pub-muenster.de

The lab’s now truly international. Sarra from Tunesia joins the lab to investigate differences in seed dormancy. She looks forward to preparing loads of seed germination assays, genome-marker analyses, and qPCRs.

The lab keeps growing! Guillaume will be our new postdoc working on parasite gene function. He brings a little French culture to the lab plus lots of practical expertise in parasite-host interaction research. Emily, Selina, and Svenja also join the lab as new undergrads, who will contribute to our work on broomrape biology. Thanks to the DAAD’s RISE program, Emily could come all the way from Vermont/USA to learn more about host-induced gene silencing. More on the RISE program: https://www.daad.de/rise/en/rise-germany/

Our new paper by Clara von Münchow, Susann Wicke and our collaboraters from the Neve-Jar institute about a new population of the weedy parasite Phelipanche aegyptiaca in Israel is printed. Check it out here: The weedy parasite Phelipanche aegyptiaca attacks Brassica rapa var. rapa L. for the first time in Israel. doi: 10.1094/PDIS-02-19-0285-PDN

A heart welcome to our new bachelor students. Anna van Wüllen and Marvin Tigges will work on flowering time genes using host induced gene-silencing. Christopher Lee and Virginia Böhm will work in bioinformatics developing new tools to assess the evolution of genes.

Steffen Kobler successfully defended his thesis for the Master of Education today. All the best for your future career!

Our new paper ‘Morphology, geographic distribution, and host preferences are poor predictors of phylogenetic relatedness in the mistletoe genus Viscum L.’ is hot off the press. Check it out in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution or email us for a reprint.

Steffen will work on the genetic diversity of broomrapes (Phelipanche sp.) in the Middle East.

Linda and Dake successfully finished their bachelor theses and were conferred their B.Sc. degrees. All the best for your future!

Lara Köster and Svenja Nötzold are new to the lab and will help us as student research assistants to speed up data generation and automate our analyses.

Clara got awarded a research scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service for a two and half months stay in Israel.

A little break from her bioinformatics Bachelor thesis work: Linda will now also be helping us with RNA and DNA extractions and parasite/host preparations.

Check out our new paper Barrett CF, Wicke S, Sass C. 2018. ‘Dense infraspecific sampling reveals rapid and independent trajectories of plastome degradation in a heterotrophic orchid complex.’ New Phytologist nn. doi: 10.1111/nph.15072.

Amelie Jüditz successfully defended her thesis for the Master of Education today. All the best for your future career!

Isabel Wagner successfully defended her thesis "Transcriptomic changes of the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus after the switch from its intermediate to its final host" today.
All the best for your future research!

Clara von Münchow successfully defended her thesis "Developing genomic barcodes from whole-genome shotgun sequencing of fresh and historic specimens of the agricultural pest Striga (Orobanchaceae)" today.
We are also happy that she will continue to pursue her PhD in our group.

Peter Lyko's proposal for his student project "The effect of light and other stresses on the growth and photosynthesis of hemiparasitic plants" was awarded by the University of Münster's internal science advancement program  SAFIR

Julian Koch successfully defended his master thesis "Proteomic shifts en route to a fully parasitic lifestyle in Orobanchaceae".
All the best for your future research!