Plant Ecophysiology NEWS

April 2012
Mieke de Wit will defend her PhD thesis "Neighbour detection and pathogen defence during competition for light" on Tuesday 17 April at 14.30 h in the Academy building at Utrecht University.


April 2012
Joanna K Polko succesfully defended her PhD thesis "Molecular regulation of ethylene-induced hyponasty" in public on 11 April 2012. The defense was a great succes, as was the party!
Find Joanna's publications frmo this thesis through the Publications link in the navigation panel on the left.


October 2011
The long-awaited discovery of oxygen sensors in plants is a fact! As part of a European research team we publish in Nature how RAP2.12, a member of the Arabidopsis ethylene response factor family of transcription factors, takes up this role. Briefly, oxygen controls RAP2.12 protein stability through an N-end rule pathway, thus contributing to flooding tolerance. Read the full story on the Nature website, or click this link.

Press coverage:
NRC Handelsblad (Dutch) -click here
Hoe?zo! Radio (Dutch) - click here
NieuweOogst.nu (Dutch) - click here
nu.nl (Dutch) - click here
EOS/Scientific American - click here
Planten houden adem in - UU press release (Dutch) - click here



October 2011
Our latest contribution on the control of plant movements can be found as an early view paper on the New Phytologist website. The study shows how ethylene stimulates local cell expansion to control upward petiole movement (hyponasty). This involves a local change in the orientation of microtubules, which is a prerequisite for this movement to occur. Find the entire manuscript here.


July 2011
The Plant Journal is publishing two back-to-back papers on blue light-mediated shade avoidance, one of which is from Utrecht University (Keuskamp et al) and the other being a joint paper by University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and the SALK Institute (USA) (Keller et al).
The journal issue features our illustrations on the cover. In short, we show how both auxin and brassinosteroids are major regulators of cryptochrome-mediated shade avoidance through coordinated control of a group of cell wall modifying proteins: XTH's.


June 2011
The PhD thesis of Diederik H Keuskamp is ready to be defended in public 20 June at 14.30 at the Academy building in Utrecht. Diederik has so far published papers from his thesis in PNAS, Plant Journal and Plant Physiology, as well as a book chapter and review based on his literature review.

May 2011
Our contribution in PNAS' final issue from 2010, on PIN3 control of shade avoidance, has been highlighted on various occasions:
- Faculty of 1000
- News and Views update in Nature Cell Biology by Markus Grebe (
- scientific news outlets (e.g. ScienceBlog, ScienceDaily, PhysOrg, BioScholar)


April 2011

The New Phytologist published their special issue on Plant Anaerobiosis (April 2011). This issue has four contributions from our group, check out this issue here.
- Perata, Armstrong and Voesenek. Plants and flooding stress. download link. 
- Vashist et al. Natural variation of submergence tolerance among Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. download link.
- Chen et al. Fitness consequences of natural variation in flooding-induced shoot elongation in Rumex palustris. download link.
- Lee et al. Molecular characterization of the submergence response of the Arabidopsis thaliana ecotype Columbia. download link.

December 2010
PNAS is publishing our latest contribution on auxin control of shade avoidance, entitled Auxin transport through PIN-FORMED 3 (PIN3) controls shade avoidance and fitness during competition (link to paper). This paper covers parts of the upcoming thesis of our PhD student Diederik Keuskamp. We show that low R:FR ratio enhances PIN3 gene expression, changes PIN3 protein orientations from basal to lateral, and thus stimulates auxin accumulation in the lateral cell layers of the elongating organ. As a result, elongation is stimulated. We show that PIN3-mediated control of this process is essential to competitive power as fitness of pin3 mutants is reduced by competing wild-type neighbors by approx. 40%, relative to competition with other pin3 mutants.
Check this link for a press release (in Dutch).



June 2010
Xin Chen has succesfully defended her PhD thesis on intraspecific variation in flooding-induced petiole elongation, at Radboud University Nijmegen on 31 May. The project was collaborative one between the Utrecht University Plant Ecophysiology group and the Radboud University Experimental Plant Ecology group.



May 2010
recently graduated Plant Ecophysiology PhD student Martijn van Zanten (graduated with honours on 4 november 2009) received a Rubicon grant from the Netherlands organisation for scientific research (NWO) for a two-year postdoc at the Max Planck Insititute for Plant Breeding research (Cologne, Germany).

April 2010
Trends in Plant Science published a special issue this month on Induced biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) from plants, featuring a review by Wouter Kegge and Ronald Pierik. This paper reviews and discusses how BVOCs can affect competitive interactions between plants in dense vegetations.

Download a pdf of this paper here.

August 2009
Nature (13 August 2009 Edition) has published papers on 'snorkeling' or 'high rise' rice. Japanese colleagues (Hattori et al) have shown that flooding-induced elongation of the shoot is controlled by members of the Ethylene Response Factor family of transcription factors and this, as argued in an accompanying paper by Rens Voesenek and Julia Bailey-Serres can, under particular flooding dynamics, be of great importance for plant survival and thus food production. Find this issue of Nature, including accompanying movies here.

A selection of coverage in the press is listed below:
- Have SNORKEL, will survive (English) - Nature podcast (mp3)
- 'Super rice' deploys 'snorkel' to survive floods (English) - NPR News
- Kopf über wasser (German) -Deutschlandfunk
- Genes Found that Help Rice Stay Above Floodwaters  - VOA-News