The UPSC Greenhouse (Photo: Anne Honsel)
In their meeting on the 21st of November 2019, the Kempe Foundations decided to grant a package of six post-doctoral stipends and to approve four additional applications from UPSC. The stipend package is granted to UPSC and it will be used in the frame of a recently started genome sequencing project of Norway spruce and Scots pine that is coordinated by Ove Nilsson. Peter Kindgren and Ewa Mellerowicz receive funding for their research projects, Annika Nordin for doing field work and Stéphane Verger support to buy a new advanced microscope.
UPSC is currently developing a significantly improved reference version of the spruce genome and a full sequence of the Scots pine genome, together with extensive resequencing of spruce and pine genomes. This project was funded in January 2019 by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation together with a linked project at the Science for Life Laboratory in Uppsala/Stockholm coordinated by Ulf Gyllensten. The six post-doctoral fellows granted by the Kempe Foundations will allow UPSC groups to take full advantage of the new conifer genomic tools and to help to further improve the resource.
Peter Kindgren (SLU) is investigating the functional role of non-coding transcripts in plants. These transcripts originate from genome regions that do not contain protein information and were first thought to be insignificant noise but have been shown to play diverse biological roles. Peter Kindgren plans to apply a recently developed method to study these non-coding transcripts in tree species like aspen and spruce. He wants to find out how the non-coding DNA of these tree species is used to adapt them to their environment.
Ewa Mellerowicz’s project is focussing on certain lipophilic compounds of the aspen wood which often impact pulping negatively but are interesting for pharmaceutics, cosmetics and the paint industry. Ewa Mellerowicz and her group want to elucidate the nature of these compounds, their link to hemicellulose, one of the main components of wood, and see if they occur also in other tree species. They hope that their results can improve the pulping process. In a parallel approach, they plan to test if these lipids have antibacterial or anticancer properties and might serve as basis to develop new products from the wood.
Annika Nordin and her co-applicant, Jonas Öhlund from Skogforsk, are planning to study how the choice of planting spot on a forest clear-cut in combination with timing of planting and fertilization of the seedlings can improve the establishment and growth of newly planted trees. The researchers hope that their results will improve the efficiency of forest regeneration practices and contribute to more sustainable forestry. The funding from Kempe Foundations will cover the costs for the field work.
Stéphane Verger is doing research on plant cell-to-cell adhesion and plant biomechanics. The Kempe Foundations grant will, together with additional funding from SLU, allow to acquire an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to complement the existing high-end microscopy equipment available at UPSC. This technology provides a large array of possibilities to quantify the mechanical properties of plants. The spectrum reaches from measuring the pressure inside living cells, to measuring the stiffness of the plant cell walls in seedlings or in wood, to the nanoscale structure of components making up the plant, like cellulose. The AFM will be used by several research groups at UPSC and KBC.
Contact information of the project leaders:
Ove Nilsson
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Science
Email:
www.upsc.se/ove_nilsson
Peter Robert Kindgren
Section for Molecular Plant Biology
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences
University of Copenhagen
e-mail:
https://plen.ku.dk/english/employees/?pure=en%2Fpersons%2Fpeter-robert-kindgren(525289c6-db78-4032-8942-ade2c82c3792).html
Ewa Mellerovicz
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Science
Email:
www.upsc.se/ewa_mellerowicz
Annika Nordin
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Science
Email:
www.upsc.se/annika_nordin
Stéphane Verger
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Science
Email:
www.upsc.se/stephane_verger