Host: Professor Ikram Blilou

Abstract:
Plants have developed a particular chemical solution for their protective cell layers, using polymerization of lipid-like precursors, giving rise to cutin and suberin. Suberin is found in cell walls of bark, endodermis, exodermis, wound tissues, abscission zones, bundle sheath and other tissues. It is highly protective against biotic and abiotic stresses, shows great developmental plasticity and its chemically recalcitrant nature is proposed as an avenue for sequestration of atmospheric carbon by plants. Here, I will present the latest genetic and cell biological discoveries that provide inroads into the many remaining secrets of suberin, namely, it transports out of the cell, its polymerization in the cell wall, as well as the elusive role of phenolics and reactive-oxygen species play in its deposition, structure and function.

Bio:
Niko Geldner studied biology at the Universities of Mainz, Bordeaux and Tübingen. In Tübingen, he did his diploma thesis (1998) and PhD thesis (1998-2003) in the lab of Gerd Juergens, working on the role of GNOM in Arabidopsis embryogenesis and the polar localisation of the PIN1 auxin efflux carrier. He left Tübingen in 2004 to do a Postdoc as an EMBO and HFSP fellow at the Salk Insitute in La Jolla, California, in the lab of Joanne Chory. There, he worked on the endosomal trafficking of the plant steroid receptor kinase BRI1 and developed the WAVE set of sub-cellular compartment markers. In summer 2007, he started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012 and Full Professor in 2018. He was awarded starting and consolidator grants from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2007 and 2013. In 2021, he received an ERC Advanced grant to work on the elucidation of root-bacteria interaction at high spatial resolution. Niko Geldner is an EMBO member since 2017 and was elected AAAS Fellow in 2021.