Molecular Genetics

Welcome to our Molecular Genetics website. The research in our group is focussed on plant development. Plants contribute significantly to the beauty of our planet and are essential for the sustainability of our ecosystems. Plants grow and develop while continuously monitoring information from the environment. In the next decades, it will become essential to understand plant development in detail to learn how plants cope with a changing environment. In addition, fundamental strategies of development should be compared between plants and animals to understand basic principles of multicellular development.
Plant development depends largely on the activity of small regions of continuous growth and development, the meristems. Within these meristems, small groups of stem cells maintain a pool of undifferentiated cells. The molecular genetics group aims to understand better how stem cells are kept and how meristems work. We use the tiny "lab weed" Arabidopsis thaliana to look at root tips because the root meristem has a simple cellular organization.

We want to inform you about the advantages of Arabidopsis roots when you are interested in developmental biology or cell biology. Furthermore, in 'Research' we summarize what we have learnt so far and to introduce you to other workers in the root field.