Molecular Cell Biology (Prof. Dr. Peter Nick)

Fritz-Haber-Weg, Gbd. 30.43 (Biology Tower), 5. floor. e-mail. How to find us

Interview in Biospektrum

Living is Searching (Springer-Nature 2023)

Secretary

• Miss Nicole Williams, R501, Tel. 0721-608 42142

INSTITUTE SEMINARS

the journal with the longest tradition in cell biology (Springer-Nature). We publish it. more...

​

Biohacking with Pyriculol

Around half of the life forms on this planet live as parasites. The unvoluntary "hosts" fight back by immune systems. Also plants are endowed with immunity that is, however, completely different from ours. The complexity is comparable though and arose from an evolutionary arm race between plants and parasites. First, there is a broad basal immunity acting against entire groups of organisms (such as all bacteria or all fungi). However, evolution is a flow, meaning that plant pathogens evolved signals, termed effectors that can turn off the stress hormone jasmonate and, thus, basal immunity.  In a next round of arm race, plants developed proteins that are able to sense such manipulative signals and re-install immunity. Often, as a last  resort, triggered by salicylic acid (by the way the natural precursor of aspirine) the infected cell will commit suicide to pull the invader into death, by this protecting the neighbouring cells. We show in this study that the causative agent of Rice Blast, a fungal disease with massive impact on food security in many Asian countries, has invented a novel, devilishly sophisticated method to "hack" the immune system of its host. The fungus produces the polyketide Pyriculol that is a structural mimic of salicylic acid. This imitation meticulously evades important aspects of salicylic acid, though. While cell death is activated and the basal immunity (depending on jasmonic acid) is turned off, the formation of defence compounds that render the kamikaze strategy of the victim efficient is suppressed. At the same time, the neighbouring cells are overwhelmed by false alarm, such that they already start killing themselves before the fungus has even arrived. This sophisticated strategy was unveiled by Dr. Junning Ma who did his PhD with us funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council and has now been published in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

225. Ma J, Morel JB, Riemann M, Jacob S, Nick P. Pyriculol-mediated defence potentiation in rice: a non-pathogenic secondary metabolite enhances host immunity against Magnaporthe oryzae. J Exp Bot, 10.1093/jxb/erag061 - pdf

Press Release of the KIT

​

The new "Strasburger"

127 years ago Eduard Strasburger founded the textbook of botany, which appeared now in the 38. edition - this makes the "Strasburger" the biology textbook with the longest history. Peter Nick contributed a couple of 100 pages to the topics structure and function of the plant body and plant development. The "Strasburger" pursues the goal to depict the entire knowledge on plants, comprehensively, up-to-date, and at the same time filtered. Even though it had never been easier to acquire information, the problem is progressively to filter relevant from irrelevant. Textbooks are, therefore, not outdated, but more important than ever. more...

FKI

The State Teaching Award 2015 was given to Peter Nick and Mathias Gutmann. The money was used to found the Forum. Beyond faculties and disciplines, we debate here on controversial topics. In the SS 2026 we address the question, whether non-human life forms should have rights. more...

ARTTI Podcast on Gene Technology in Agriculture. more...

​

Enigmatic plastid fingers - what are stromules good for?

Plastids harbour photosynthesis that sustains all life on our planet. In response to stress they can form long fingerlike protrusions. These stromules had already been observed around 150 years ago, but later fell into oblivion. Only at the turn of this century, they were rediscovered. First, they were thought to connect plastids like tubes, but this was later shown to be wrong. What are stromules good for then? By a treatment with the "plant adrenalin" jasmonate, we could induce stromules in a controlled and specific manner and follow their behaviour by Spinning Disc Confokal Microscopy supported by fluorescent markers. In frame of her PhD, Toranj Rahpeyma was abel to show that stressed plastids use stromules to ask the nucleus for help. The nucleus turns on rescue genes, whose products are then transported into the challenged plastid. However, stromules also contact other components of the cell, for instance, the peroxisomes that are involved in the formation of jasmonates. Thus, these enigmatic plastid fingers are nothing else than a manifestion of the otherwise invisible and complex signalling that occur in plant cells, when they have to cope with stress. This work has now appeared in Plant Physiology and even made it to the title page.

Publication

228. Rahpeyma T, Varo GV, Mühlberg F, Nick P (2026) Fingers for Signaling. A Possible Role Of Stromules In Intracellular Communication. Plant Physiol, doi 10.1093/plphys/kiag373

Press release of the KIT

Health as ecological phenomenon

Around 150 years ago, Jahren Robert Koch succeeded to identify the cause of tuberculosis using a simple and convincing postulate. A microbe that is always found together with symptom, but is absent, when the symptoms are absent, must be the cause. However, the novel, climate-change promoted Grapevine Trunk Diseases ignore the Koch Postulate: the suspicious fungi are also found in the wood of healty plants without the presence of symptoms. In our previous work, we were able to work out experimental systems to study infection under controlled lab conditions, and could demonstrate that the fungi manipulate plant immunity by chemical signals and are also able to sense when the plant suffers from climate stress. In frame of the project "Microbes 4 Future" funded by the KIT presidium fund, we tried to understand the complex reality in the real-world vineyard. These diseases used to occur only sporadically in the past, but have become epidemic in consequence of climate change and now cause immense economic damage. Along the entire Upper Rhine Valley our colleague Dr. Islam Khattab sampled soil from the rhizosphre of diseased vines along with healthy plants from the same vineyard. After isolating and sequencing the DNA from this soil, cutting-edge bioinformatics allowed to reconstract the microbiome. To our surprise, the suspicious fungi also occurred on healthy vines, but here, they do not connect with each other. Instead, the outbreak of the disease is heralded by these fungi teaming up. Thus, disease is not a question of presence or absence of specific microbes, but rather the result of perturbed microbial ecology. This work has now appeared in the journal Plant Soil:

226. Khattab IM, Magold T, Lenk F, Sturm G, Flubacher N, Kaster AK, Nick P (2026) Health or disease – a question of rhizomicrobial ecology? The case of grapevine trunk disease. Plant Soil, doi: 10.1007/s11104-026-08541-4

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

Together with partners in Colmar and Basel we try, in the project "Roots of Resilience" to stimulate grapevine immunity by root microbes we have identified in our previous research. more...

Together with the start-up Vertical Farm Tech and the Max-Rubner Institute we develop in the project "VFT4Hero" a Vertical Farm Strategy for the Superfood plants Ginger, Turmeric, and Wasabi. more...