EvoDevo of Speciation

"Species" are a central concept of biology and usually understood as unit of propagation. This species concept works neatly for animals, because mating of individuals from different species usually do not work or lead to sterile progeny (a classic example would be the mule). Plants, however, do not choose their mating partner themselves, but use insects for doing so. Moreover, plants can circumvent problems with sexuality by asexual propagation. What does "species" now mean for plants? Dr. Sascha Wetters proposed here a new concept, whereby genes that control shape or geometry of flowers are drivers of speciation. To test this idea, he cracked a hard nut - the genus Sage, with more than 1000 known species, one of the most diverse genera at all. Here, he can show that a duplication of the gene switch GLOBOSA facilitated the colonisation of the New World by larger and less asymmetric flowers that recruited novel pollinators, hummingbirds, leading to the birth of numerous new species. This allows to bridge developmental biology and evolution. This work has now been published.

217. Wetters S, Nick P (2025) B-class gene GLOBOSA – a facilitator for enriched species diversity of Salvia in the New World? Plant Biol, 10.1111/plb.70002 - pdf

EUCOR Project Roots of Resilience

EUCOR, the trinational assocation of Upper-Rhine universities (Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Colmar-Mulhouse, Basel) launched a call for so-called Seed Money projects. Here, partner KIT-JKIP (Islam Khattab, Peter Nick) together with the University of Basel (Pascale Flury) and the Université Haute-Alsace (Julie Chong) was successful with the project Roots of Resilience. The project tries to render grapevine more resilient against climate-change born novel fungal diseases ("Esca & Co") through improved microbial communities in the rhizosphere. The project is based on results of Kliwiresse, but also previous Upper Rhine Interreg projects, especially Vitifutur and DialogProTec. However, the central reason for the success of the proposal was the cooperation cultivated over four Interreg Upper Rhine networks. The Seed Project in turn will feed into the planned sequel project Robin Root. Planned start is February 2025, running time is two years. more...

Salt Tolerant Sorghum Millet

Climate changes makes sea levels rise making fertile coastal land salty. The Nile delta, Bangladesh, Vietnam, but also the South of Italy are already today confronted with salt stress. Can we find crop plants that are able to thrive on such soils? In the past, we have, initiated by our Syrian colleague Dr. Adnan Kanbar, focused on stress resilience in Sorghum Millet. This ancient crop originates from Sudan and can cope with harsh conditions. In fact, we were able to show that some Sorghum varieties not only can grow under salinity, but accumulate more sugar when confronted with salinity. What happens to this sugar, differs - some Sorghum varieties store it in the shoot, what is interesting for bio-economic use (for instance for the production of bio-ethanol) others store it in their seeds, what supports food security in regions affected by soil salinity. During her PhD our colleague Eman Abuslima from Egypt was able to uncover the reason for the different sugar use: a gene switch for the sugar transporter SWEET13 decides. A very active version of this switch could be identified in the old Syrian landrace Razinieh. By breeding, this switch can now be crossed into other millet varieties, and by means of the molecular knowledge, the promising individuals in the progeny can be recognised already in the seedling stage by a simple PCR. 
 

Publication

216. Abuslima E, Kanbar A, Ismail A, Raorane ML, Eiche E, El-Sharkawy I, Junker BH, Riemann M, Nick P (2025) Salt stress-induced remodeling of sugar transport: a role for promoter alleles of SWEET13. Nature Sci Rep 15, 7580 - pdf

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Tumour Compound from a Mali Desert Tree

The use of plants for healing accompanied humans from their very beginnings. Among the almost half a million of species that have already been described, there are many that produce unique compounds. Especially in developing countries many people depend on plants for healing, because they cannot afford the expensive Western style medication. The tree Detarium microcarpum growing in Mali is used in traditional medicine also against breast cancer. Many anti-tumour compounds target the microtubules, which blocks the proliferation of cancer cells. We, therefore, investigated, whether this is the case for this medicinal plant from Mali. Using tobacco cells, where microtubules were labelled by a fluorescent protein, and could demonstrate that, indeed, extracts from D. microcarpum eliminated microtubules swiftly and efficiently. The effect could be localised to the alkaloid fraction. On this base it will be possible to identify the active compound in the future, not only to develop novel tumour therapies, but also to lift traditional medicine by scientific grounding on a higher level.

Publication

Dembele N, Nick P (2024) Anti‐microtubular activity of total alkaloids and aqueous extract of Detarium microcarpum a medicinal plant harvested in Mali. Protoplasma 262, 415-430 - pdf