Articles for category Köpfe und Karrieren

The DBG awards Dr. Norbert Bittner (Lab of Prof. Dr. Reinhard Kunze at Freie Universität Berlin) with its Best Paper Prize. Bittner who did this work in the lab of Prof. Dr. Monika Hilker during his PhD thesis together with other scientists from the Universities at the Spanish Barcelona and the Swedish Lund has demonstrated in the journal PNAS (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910991116) how pines defend themselves against larvae of the herbivorous pine sawfly at an early stage. The pine trees notice the sex pheromones that female sawflies spread to attract males and thus before they lay eggs. Exposure to the pheromones primed the tree’s defense against sawfly eggs. The priming effect results in enhanced egg mortality. “For the first time it has been shown, that trees defend themselves against eggs of a herbivore at a very early time before herbivory even takes place,” the board of DBG’s own Wilhelm Pfeffer Foundation summarizes the results. Bittner will receive the deed at the next Botanikertagung. The award is endowed with 1,000 Euros.

Read more how DBG supports young scientists

Robert Hoffie, who tweets as @ForscherRobert on Twitter received the Section's first award for excellent science communication on 13th February 2020.

Sorry, futher details available in German only.

Erstmals haben wir unseren neuen Preis für Wissenschaftskommunikation verliehen. Die Auszeichnung ging an Robert Hoffie, Doktorand am Leibniz-Institut für Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung in Gatersleben (IPK). Als @ForscherRobert engagiert sich der Pflanzenforscher in Sozialen Medien, erklärt geduldig den Stand der Forschung über moderne Methoden in der Pflanzenforschung und scheut - wenn es nötig ist - auch nicht die Auseinandersetzung mit Politikern.
„Wenige andere Pflanzenwissenschaftler sind so engagiert in den sozialen Netzwerken wie Robert Hoffie“, sagte Prof. Dr. Stefan Rensing, Sprecher der Sektion. Er wünsche sich mehr Wissenschaftler wie Robert Hoffie, die unsere Themen in die Öffentlichkeit tragen und unsere Sichtbarkeit erhöhen.

Die Auszeichnung verlieh die Sektion am 13. Februar, während der jährlichen Konferenz Molecular Biology of Plants in Dabringhausen (Nordrhein-Westfalen). „Der Preis ist für mich Motivation und Bestätigung zugleich“, erklärte Robert Hoffie. Denn der aktuelle Stand der Wissenschaft sei das Beste, was wir haben, um zu fundierten Einschätzungen zu kommen. "Worauf, wenn nicht darauf, sollen wir unsere Einschätzungen denn künftig sonst stützen?“ fragt sich der 28-Jährige. Zwar könne die Wissenschaft nicht die Politik ersetzen, werde aber selbst immer mehr zu einem gesellschaftlichen Akteur.

Quelle: IPK beim idw

Temperature regulation in tree canopies, heavy metals and herbivory, speciation, development of fluorescent sensors for hypoxia investigations, a phytopararetrovirus of sugar beet, (bio-)synthesis and chemistry of suberin and leucine, as well as the development of orchards in the city were topics of the ten awarded master theses, which were given DBG's awards for best plant science master theses in 2019. The work was carried out at the universities of Bayreuth, Bielefeld, Bonn, Dresden, Cologne, Leipzig, Münster, Oldenburg, Rostock, Salzburg, and the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. DBG thanks all involved jury members at the universities.

​read more about all 10 awarded theses

The DBG awarded the two scientists Dr. Katja Meyer (Bielefeld University, WG Prof. D. Staiger) and Dr. Max Lauterbach (Mainz University, WG Prof. G. Kadereit, now Australia) with the Best Paper Prize in Plant Sciences 2018. Meyer adapted the iCLIP technique for plants and identified numerous rhythmic transcripts to be directly regulated by the clock-controlled RNA-binding protein AtGRP7. She published the results in the Journal Genome Biology (DOI: 10.1186/s13059-017-1332-x). Lauterbach identified genes putatively encoding novel C4 proteins through a comparison of five chenopod species with different photosynthetic types. He published the results in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science (DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01939). The awardees will receive their certificates next year during the Conference Botanikertagung in Rostock, Germany. The financial endowments were already given to them.

Read more about DBG’s support of young scientists

Why an invasive pest slug devoured some lettuces while others remain untouched was one of the topics of the honoured master theses (little hint: it were not the salads themselves). The other young plant scientists elucidated specific functions of N-glycosylated proteins in plants, analysed the effects of inhibited chloroplast's development on genetic expression, tested, which substances of an invasive plant contributed to substantial crop failure. One thesis clarified three algal taxa of Trachelomonas, that were validly described already 100 years ago. For the fourth time the German Society for Plant Sciences (DBG) has awarded outstanding MSc theses. This year they were given to three female and two male biologists from the universities of Bielefeld, Münster, Salzburg, Kiel as well as LMU in Munich. The summaries and images of the outstanding works are now on the website.  

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