2019 is over and with it a decade in which many things happened in all of our lives. During these 10 years many discoveries were made, from CRISPR/Cas9, single cell RNAseq to the NLR resistosome, that changed our scientific views and opportunities to tackle challenging questions. It also enabled young scientists to build-up their own labs that will for sure change the research landscape in the next decade. This is our very own year-end summary with all what we experienced in 2019.
January: Nothing special happened during this month. Slowly coming back from the Christmas vacation and making everything ready for the upcoming arrivals were certainly on the agenda during this month. Ah yeah, Suayb finally gets his office and is on an undercover mission at the COS party in Heidelberg (thanks to Alyona) 🙂
February: Paul arrives in Tübingen in our team and starts his postdoctoral research on the bacterial effector-driven interplay between vesicle trafficking and autophagy. He made a huge impact from the beginning, participating in seminars, asking excellent questions and also socializing with many other members of the ZMBP. Team leader Suayib went to the yearly “Molecular Biology of Plants” conference in Dabringhausen and presented his work on the interplay between the proteasome and autophagy during bacterial infection and his future plans for the Üstün Lab.
March: Our first PhD student Gautier arrives in March and starts the SFB1101 funded project on the proteasome regulation during plant immunity. Gautier quickly integrates into the lab and also immediately takes part in our RegioPlantScience Meeting in Hohenheim. Paul is also giving his first progress seminar at the 6th floor. Finally, our small team is complete!
April: Suayb takes part in the ZMBP Group Leader Retreat in Bad Urach. Pia Lutz, master student at the ZMBP, starts her lab rotation in our lab. She worked on E3 ligases that probably mediate the proteaphagy response during plant immunity. We had a great time with her, and she made substantial findings that will certainly help us in the future.
May: Suayb participates in the leadership workshop offered by the ZWM and covered by the DFG. This is certainly something that all junior but also quite a few senior group leaders should consider as it really provides useful information how to lead a team. Suayb also kick starts the preprint club at the ZMBP, initiated by Mayank Chugh (at this time PhD student at the Cellular Nanoscience). Mid may, Margot Raffeiner from the Börnke Lab (IGZ, Grossbeeren) joins our team for more than 2 weeks to perform in vitro ubiquitination assays and pulldown experiments to identify posttranslational modifications as well as novel interactions partners of her candidate proteins. We had a very intense and fun time during these two weeks in the lab and Margot made a lot of new friends at the ZMBP. We hope she’ll join for some additional experiments in 2020!
June: The Üstün Lab organized and conducted its
first master course in “Function and analysis of proteolytic degradation pathways”. Thanks to Gautier and Paul everything worked out and we had a great time during these two weeks with our students. It was a great experience and we hope to get more students next year to bring them closer to the plant proteostasis topic.
July: This month was definitely one of the busiest during the whole year. We submitted our full proposal for the SFB1101. Suayb went to the Emmy Noether Meeting in Potsdam, organized by the DFG and directly continued networking at the 18th international workshop on plant membrane biology in Glasgow. He presented Paul’s work on the interplay between vesicle trafficking and plant immunity. Glasgow was also the stage for the Congress on Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (MPMI 2019), where Paul and Gautier had the chance to present their projects during the poster sessions. It was a great experience for everyone, a good opportunity to establish and/or strengthen ongoing collaborations, as well as perfect occasion to meet old friends!
August: It’s vacation time! By the end of the month Gautier participates in the annual PhD Retreat of the ZMBP and presents his project in form of a chalk talk.
September: Our conference marathon is still not finished as our whole team is presenting at the “International Conference of Plant Proteostasis” in beautiful Freiburg. This specialized meeting is a full success creating many new collaborations and ideas for our research. Being part of the “PlantProteostasis” community will provide our group with many opportunities in the future. We are also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the ZMBP, with an impressive line-up of speakers (current and former ZMBP members as well as invited speakers). It’s a privilege to be part of this great community! For Gautier it was a busy month full of “conferencing” as he participated at the 4th summer academy organized by PhD students at ZMBP!
October: Suayb is invited to INRA Toulouse by Laurent Noël for a PhD thesis committee meeting and also gives a seminar on the role of Autophagy during plant-microbe interactions. Certainly, this was one of the most memorable days during 2020 due to the great hospitality and also science taking place in Toulouse! After Toulouse, Gautier and Suayb participate in the SFB1101 retreat in Heidelberg. Gautier is talks about his findings on the regulation of the proteasome and we are able to strengthen our network with labs from COS Heidelberg, ZMBP Tübingen as well as University of Hohenheim. At the end of the month all members of The Üstün Lab participate in the bachelor course “Molekulare Genetik der Pflanzen”.
November begins with amazing news: The Üstün Lab secured its first grant (SFB1101) which will enable us to get a new team member in 2020! The Üstün Lab is also starting to write its very first article which deals with microbial effectors and their role in proteolytic degradation. We also said hello to Alyona Minina from COS Heidelberg/SLU Uppsala who was helping us out with some amazing vacuole staining and root imaging. Thanks to Alyona we made a crucial finding in Paul’s project and we are pretty sure that this great collaboration with Alyona will yield to many more exciting findings! This
amazing work week ended with Gautier’s first PhD thesis meeting and a visit of Yasin Dagdas, group leader at GMI Vienna, who is one of Gautier’s thesis committee members. Gautier presented his current progress as well as future directions receiving great feedback by his thesis committee members. For our group Yasin’s visit was a true win as we could establish new collaborations that will hopefully yield exciting findings! This busy month ended with a visit of Jos Schippers, group leader at IPK Gatersleben, whom we hosted for our SFB1101 seminar series at the ZMBP. It was really great to have Jos here in Tübingen and we could establish some future collaborations.
December: This month started with the arrival of two new group members. Ophélie Léger from Toulouse, future PhD student in the group of Thomas Stanislas at ZMBP, joined us as a research assistant for one month. Jia Xuan Leong, master student at the University of Heidelberg is currently doing her lab rotation and working on the project “how a bacterial effector modulates autophagy”. We are really glad to have you all here in our team. Finally, we also started one of our big experiments for 2020: in a great team effort we planted approximately 900 Arabidopsis plants for a huge proteomics experiment. Thanks again to Paul, Gautier, Ophélie and Jia Xuan for their work! Also, during this month, we hosted Marco Trujillo from University of Freiburg for our SFB1101 seminar series. Marco gave an excellent presentation about his past and ongoing work on protein ubiquitination and its role in plant immunity. Our month pretty much ended with our traditional Christmas celebration at the “Schwärzloch” with lots of Glühwein, Lebkuchen and german Christmas dishes! Finally, we also submitted our first manuscript, just before Christmas!
It was a very intense, productive, sometimes tiring and challenging year for our small team. This small break during the years will charge our empty batteries and provide us with energy for new adventures and journeys that we will have to face in 2020.
The Üstün Lab is wishing everyone a happy new year and a fantastic start in 2020!
