Our current projects
Plants encounter pathogenic microbes multiple times during their life. Most remain resistant, but some develop a disease. In both cases, these invasions are associated with growth retardation, which is referred to as a growth-defense trade-off. We want to understand how plants can maintain their growth during an immune response, contain defense reactions that are too strong, and then recover. For that, we combine molecular and phenotyping omics, AI, and other molecular and computational biology technologies. We work together with partners within public-private partnerships, but have projects independent of them, too.
LettuceKnow and LettuceKnow-associated project
(2019-2026; 2024-2028)
CropXR
2024-2028
RECUP: Plant recovery after an immune response
(2026-2030)
TOPLESS family of transcriptional Corepressors
(from 2023)
Our past projects
NWO-XS 2024-2025
Towards a new pesticide-free approach for increasing crop disease resilience
In this project, we searched for regulators of the plant recovery capacity after the immune system activation. We found several Arabidopsis mutants defective in the ability to re-ignite the shoot meristem growth. This project was also instrumental in deepening our understanding of the regulation of Arabidopsis recovery after the PAMP nlp24 treatment through TOPLESS family of transcriptional corepressors and other proteins. People working on the project: Samara Almeida Landman, Femke van den Berg, Marrit Alderkamp.
Defense and Recovery of Plants 