We are studying molecular function of transcriptional co-regulatory machineries in plants. Our current focus it to understand how plant co-regulators act together with transcription factors in the plant cell to regulate the expression of the downstream genes. Majority of Eukaryotic transcription factors do not act on their own, they form multimeric protein complexes with co-repressors or co-activators that modulate the function of the transcription factors. In general, we know surprisingly little about the specificity of these co-regulatory proteins, their composition and effector actions. What are the molecular machineries that assemble on repressed vs. activated genes, and what is the underlying grammar of their specific interaction? This is, among others, our main research question that we are trying to address. We are using a multidisciplinary approach, combining proteomics and genomics with bioinformatics to study the cofactor function in plants.

People:

We are a junior research group established in 2019 in the Plant Cell and Molecular Biology laboratory at the Institute of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Current members:

• Dr. Cezary Smaczniak (project leader)
• Angelique Lauschke (Master student)

Past members:

• Konstantin Rehbein (Master student)
• Rosario Vega León (PhD student)
• Christopher Großmann (Master student, student assistant)
• Maurizio Pimentel (Master student)
• Emilia Rezzolla (Bachelor student)
• Saoirse Goerlich (Bachelor student)
• Sarah Zentgraf (Bachelor student)
• Mario Delgadillo (student assistant)

Funding:

We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for support.