Guofeng Zhang successfully defended his doctoral thesis today. Congratulations and all the best for your future!

Happy to share good news. Thomas was awarded the teaching prize (winter term) of the students at the Faculty of Biology again this year. It means a lot to see that all the efforts are appreciated and motivates to carry on with that.

Also congratulations to Chris van der Does from the Microbiology for the same award (summer term).

Also good to see our colleague Jürgen Kleine-Vehn being exited about it 😉

Happy to share our newest paper fresh from the press. Have a look, how legume root cells prepare for hosting symbiotic infections. Enjoy the microscopy and other experiments by the lead PostDoc Morgane Batzenschlager & collaborators.

Read the article:

Batzenschlager M, Lace B, Zhang N, Su C, Egli S, Krohn P, Salfeld J, Ditengou FA, Laux T and Ott T (2025)
Competence for transcellular infection in the root cortex involves a post-replicative, cell-cycle exit decision in Medicago truncatula
eLife; 12:RP88588

Amazing news today at 5 PM when the DFG and the German Science and Humanities Council announced the 70 Clusters of Excellence that will receive generous funding for the next 7 years. We were all thrilled to learn that our cluster CIBSS was among the selected ones (again)! Congratulations to all who joined the efforts and special thanks to the speaker team including Claudine Kraft!

Just finished the second take for a documentary on nitrogen in agriculture. After an exhausting day, the whole team was happy with what we have been able to record during this day.

Special thanks to Casandra and Magda for all their efforts and time.

Stay tuned.

Thanks to the team of Véronique Germain and Sebastien Mongrand from the University of Bordeaux for letting us join their efforts to investigate the role of the partially plasma membrane-bound Calcium-dependent protein kinase 3 (CPK3) in viral infection. In their new work now published in eLife, they showed that CPK3 diffusion in the plasma membrane is reduced upon activation as well as upon viral infection and that such immobilization is depended on its substrate Remorin (REM1.2).

Congratulations to all authors!

Jolivet MD, Deroubaix AF, Boudsocq M, Abel NB, Rocher M, Robbe T, Wattelet-Boyer V, Huard J, Lefebvre D, Lu YJ, Day B, Saias G, Ahmed J, Cotelle V, Giovinazzo N, Gallois JL, Yamaji Y, German-Retana S, Gronnier J, Ott T, Mongrand S, Germain V (2025)
Interdependence of plasma membrane nanoscale dynamics of a kinase and its cognate substrate underlies Arabidopsis response to viral infection
eLife; 12:RP90309
pre-print deposited at: bioRxiv; https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.31.551174

Today, we had our first recording for a documentary on nitrogen in agriculture. Great kick-off and special thanks to Magda and Casandra for all their efforts.

Our cluster of excellence CIBSS and the university’s outreach office have just released an article about the successful interdisciplinary collaborations enabled in CIBSS, approaching similiar pathways in human and plant cells.

Read the full article here.

Great news: Henriette Rübsam joined our team as a PostDoc and Research Manager. Knowing her from the ENSA project as a PhD student with Kasper Andersen at Aarhus University, the whole team is now looking forward to her valuable inputs and skills.

Observing the misuse of social media and the influence used by owner Elon Musk to support far-right winged parties and movements together with continuous and unbearable fake news and lies spread on this platform made us leaving X fully after 12 years. We now exclusively follow and send posts on Bluesky, which hopefully stays integer in the future. Follow us.

We are hosting the imaging workshop in frame of the SFB1381 today with inspirational talks by Beatrice Lace, Marta-Rodriguez Franco, Angela Nauman (LIC), Franck Ditengou (LightHouse) and Thorsten Hugel (Chemistry).

In our current review, we aimed to discuss the new concept of the “transcellular passage cleft” (TCP). This apoplastic compartment actively contributes to the cell-to-cell passage of infection threads in legumes.

Interested? Then read the whole story in:

Zhang G and Ott T (2024)
Cellular morphodynamics and signaling around the transcellular passage cleft during rhizobial infections of legume roots
Current Opinion in Cell Biology; 91: 102436