Johanna Söntgerath (University of Freiburg)
Johanna Söntgerath's Master thesis was awarded with the Prize for the Best Plant Science Master Thesis, which was carried out at Freiburg University in the year 2025 with the title:
Analysis and epigenetic editing of the H3K27me3 trimethylation pattern of flooding memory genes in Arabidopis thaliana
Plants can form an epigenetic stress memory, and the modification of the epigenetic profile of the memory genes enables the development of more resilient plants.
Severely changing environmental conditions, such as floods, can be lethal for plants. As an adaptive mechanism to cope with abiotic stress, plants exposed to recurring floods may form a so-called epigenetic memory. Stress memory causes gene expression alterations, which leads to an improved stress performance and a higher survival rate. Johanna Söntgerath studied the epigenetic pattern at flooding memory genes in Arabidopsis thaliana and identified a memory gene which is associated with the induction of cell death. The expression of this memory gene is downregulated during the second compared to the first flooding event. Epigenetically, this gene is regulated via, among others, a histone methylation (H3K27me3). Targeted addition or removal of this epigenetic mark through the CRISPR-based method epigenome editing may impact the plant stress resilience. Based on this approach, Söntgerath produced gene constructs to modulate the H3K27me3 profile at the cell death gene. Prospective experiments will investigate the potential of these constructs in modulating plant stress resilience. Understanding the flooding stress responses and adaptations of Arabidopsis enables the development of more resilient crops, including closely related Brassicaceae and more distant families such as Solanaceae. Due to ongoing climate change and the increased frequency and severity of flooding events, this could contribute to securing food availability.
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Johanna Söntgerath conducted this work at the institute of Biology at the University of Freiburg in the working group of Dr. Sjon Hartman.
