Abstract:
Temperature stress affects the geographical distribution of plants, limits agricultural productivity, and threatens food security. Plants have an impressive capacity to acclimatize to temperature stress through a complex network of signal transduction pathways. In particular, the plant hormone auxin has been shown to play a role in regulating plant growth and development under both high and low temperature stress. Its tightly regulated distribution throughout the plant body controls an impressive variety of developmental processes that tailor plant growth and morphology to environmental conditions. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of auxin transport at the cellular level in response to temperature stress remain largely unexplored. To address this gap, we will use a novel combination of cutting-edge techniques that can collectively provide high-resolution information about proteins, lipids and cellular processes/responses that together orchestrate the auxin transport and overall plant responses to temperature stress. This research is timely and has great potential to reveal how auxin transport is regulated upon temperature stress and thus how plants acclimate and adapt to fluctuating temperatures. This type of mechanistic understanding of plant responses to climate change factors is crucial for our ability to improve and protect economically significant plants.

Bio:
After completing my master's degree in molecular biology, I began my career as a cytogeneticist at the National Cancer Institute of the Slovak Republic. In 2011, I joined Prof. Jiří Friml's group at Ghent University/VIB-PSB in Belgium as a PhD student. My doctoral journey also took me to the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) when the entire group relocated two years after I started. During these four years, I engaged in different research projects, which together allowed me to acquire substantial expertise in deciphering molecular mechanisms during patterning and subcellular trafficking in Arabidopsis thaliana. In 2015, I joined Prof. Christian Hardtke's group at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) in Switzerland, where I was working on projects focused on the regulation of auxin transport in protophloem development. My contributions to plant science were recognized when I was shortlisted among the top 5 candidates for The New Phytologist Tansley Medal in 2020, an award that honors outstanding early-career researchers.
After giving birth to twins and taking a year of maternity leave, I was eager to embark on an independent research career. This led me to a position as a researcher at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology at SLU (part of UPSC), which I began in September 2020. Since then, in addition to welcoming a third child, I have successfully established an independent line of research and secured external funding from various sources. I have been awarded Starting Grants from both the European Research Council (ERC) and the Swedish Research Council (VR), as well as a career grant from the Scandinavian Plant Physiology Society (SPPS). I also joined AcademiaNet, a database of outstanding female scientists which is an expert database of outstanding female scientists, based on nomination by Swedish Research Council.
All these achievements enabled me to establish my own research group at UPSC in autumn 2022, when I was appointed Assistant Professor at SLU. One of the primary aims of my lab is to uncover how plants cope with heat and cold stress, focusing particularly on the mechanisms that regulate the transport of the plant hormone auxin.