Dr. Stefanie Müller-Schüssele

The Plant Cell Dynamics Lab is moving and restarts as Molecular Botany Lab end of 2021 at the TU Kaiserslautern: https://www.bio.uni-kl.de/en/molecular-botany

Key Interest:

Linking Cell Biology and Physiology of Plant Organelles

Plant cells are highly compartmentalised while several organelles have to cooperate in most metabolic pathways. Moreover, as photoautotrophic sessile organisms, land plants face numerous environmental challenges such as availability of water, oxygen or light, that require fast metabolic adaptations. Regulation of metabolism often operates via redox-relays that involve the reduction or oxidation of disulfide bridges in proteins (thiol-switching), ultimately modifying enzyme activities and metabolic fluxes. The electrons necessary for these redox-relays are provided either via NADPH or directly via photosynthetic light reactions in chloroplasts, employing the redox transmitters thioredoxins and glutathione.

My aim is to study plant metabolic control mechanisms at the interface of cell biology and biochemistry. On the protein level, redox-regulation is dissected by generating and characterising mutants of key players in thiol-switching, by monitoring physiological parameters in different subcellular compartments via genetically encoded biosensors such as redox-sensitive GFPs, and by quantifying the resulting effects on plant metabolism and performance. From a cell biological point of view, the aim is to detect and link specific interorganellar membrane contact sites to metabolic cooperation, and to study the dynamics as well as the biological relevance of spatial organisation for metabolic flexibility in plants.

Anna-Lena Falz, Dr. Müller-Schüssele and Marion Pitz

Publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefanie_Mueller-Schuessele/contributions