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Bürstenbinder lab – Research group Plant Cell Biology
Maintaining order in highly crowded environments is one of the key challenges cells are facing to efficiently coordinate their precise functions. We study how a class of plant-specific scaffold proteins, termed IQ67 Domain proteins (IQDs), assemble macromolecular complexes and serve as signal integration hubs at the microtubule cytoskeleton to regulate cellular organization, transport of macromolecular complexes, cell division and cell shape during plant growth and stress responses.
The microtubule cytoskeleton is of central importance for the success of modern-day land plants and resembles a highly specialized and dynamic intracellular skeleton. The molecular and cell biological mechanisms that govern the evolutionary adaptations of the plant microtubule cytoskeleton, however, are still largely unknown.
To address the main questions we combine cell and molecular biology and protein biochemistry approaches with phylogenetics and evo-devo studies. By comparative analyses between the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha and the angiosperm Arabidopsis thaliana (and select streptophyte algae and ferns) we investigate underlying principles that govern functional specialization of microtubule-associated proteins and microtubule arrays and the emergence of plant-specific protein-protein-interaction networks by performing a systematic analysis of scaffold-like IQD proteins.
A list of publications can be found here:
We offer several Bachelor and Master projects in different fields, including protein biochemistry, cell biology and molecular biology. If you would like to join us please contact me.
Prof. Katharina Bürstenbinder
Tel: +49 6421 28 21940
E-Mail: Katharina.Buerstenbinder@biologie.uni-marburg.de