Three projects on plant research get funding from Vetenskapsrådet

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Vetenskapsrådet granted three research projects associated with UPSC. The projects from Catherine Bellini, Ewa Mellerowicz and Xiao-Ru Wang will address adventitious root initiation, signalling from secondary cell walls and the processes of hybrid speciation and adaptation to extreme habitats.

Catherine Bellini, Professor at Umeå University and group leader at UPSC, works on adventitious root initiation. Adventitious roots play an important role for plant vegetative propagation. Many factors are involved in the initiation of adventitious roots and Catherine Bellini’s group has identified several of them. The aim of the approved project is to understand better how those different factors act together and cross-talk with each other.

Ewa Mellerowicz, Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and group leader at UPSC, focuses in her research on wood formation. Wood is produced by the activity of the vascular cambium, which consists of actively dividing cells. Ewa Mellerowicz's group and others have recently observed that certain modifications of the secondary cell wall composition of wood cells lead to increased cambial growth. With the new funding from VR, they want to identify the key players that are involved in this novel signalling pathway.

One research focus of Xiao-Ru Wang, Professor at Umeå University and associated group leader at UPSC, is to understand which role hybridization between species plays for the evolution of new species. Hybridization is a very dynamic process that can generate genetic diversity for novel adaptation. With the new project, Xiao-Ru Wang and her group want to understand the process how new hybrids develop, and how they evolve to colonize new ecological niches.

Titles of the approved projects:
Catherine Bellini: Control of adventitious root initiation in Arabidopsis thaliana: deciphering the increasing complexity of molecular cross-talks
Ewa Mellerowicz: Novel signalling pathways from secondary walls
Xiao-Ru Wang: Dynamics of hybrid speciation and adaptation to extreme habitats

More information:
Catherine Bellini
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå University
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 9624
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
https://www.upsc.se/catherine_bellini

Ewa Mellerowicz
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 8367
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
https://www.upsc.se/ewa_mellerowicz