ROOT DEVELOPMENT: branching out for nutrients

I received my master’s degree in Botany from the University of Ghent, Belgium, in 1985 and completed the Belgian interuniversity postgraduate education in Marine Biology in 1989. In 1997 I obtained a PhD with a study on embryogenesis and lateral root formation in the model species Arabidopsis making use of a combination of microscopical techniques and genetic tools. After performing postdoctoral research at the Laboratory of Genetics (Ghent University), I became Group Leader of the Root Development Group at the Flanders Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) in 2001. I became a Professor at Ghent University in 2007, teaching plant developmental biology. For more details on the early days I refer to "Q&A: Tom Beeckman" published in Current Biology (Current Biology 29, R1055–R1069, October 21, 2019).
My early work focused on the activation of the cell cycle during lateral root initiation and my group established an experimental set-up to synchronize the activation of pericycle cells for lateral root formation. This system laid the foundation for a number of transcriptome studies that profiled lateral root initiation and development, revealing several novel signaling components. My current work aims to understand how the branching pattern of roots becomes established by disentangling the molecular basis of lateral root spacing mechanisms that guarantee an optimal uptake of water and nutrients from the soil. We contributed the first and major discovery towards the elucidation of "the root clock", an endogenous mechanism to induce new lateral roots at regular intervals in a growing root axis and unmasked the role of the root cap in this process. During the entire duration of this project, we stay alert to extrapolate our findings to crop species and have contributed with studies on lateral root formation in maize and rice, whether or not in collaboration with academic and industrial partners. Furthermore, we created a rhizotron platform enabling to study root growth and developmental in more natural conditions and to monitor root branching in adverse conditions or in the presence/absence of nutrients. For nitrate and phosphate, we designed high content chemical screen assays and identified compounds with the potential to promote their availability for uptake by plant roots.
Finally, we recently delved into the evolution of roots with the emphasis on the branching mechanisms. This evo-devo project has the potential to surface the fundamental mechanisms currently at play in higher plants that provide them with a strong level of flexibility to cope with ever changing soil conditions, knowledge that will be crucial in the search of methods to increase climate resilience of our crop plants. 

Isabelle obtained her B.Sc in Pharmaceutical and Biological techniques in1997 at KaHo St-Lieven in Gent. She graduated in 1999 from the Larenstein International Agricultural College (Velp, Netherlands) as Industrial engineer in Laboratory Science with specialization in Plant Biotechnology. She worked for 2 years at Bayer Cropscience in the area of molecular assisted breeding of oilseed rape before joining the VIB in 2001. At the VIB, she first joined the group of Prof. G. Gheysen mainly doing whole-mount RNA in-situ hybridization of plant parasitic nematodes. After 2 years, she joined another group to check the presence of previously selected cDNA-AFLP tags in 50.000 genes of a MJM-treated BY2 cDNA library under supervision of Dr. Pierre Hilson and Prof. Alain Goossens. Subsequently, she worked on the identification of genes involved in sexual differentiation of P. monodon and the development of a genetic map of P. monodon in the group of Dr. Frank Van Breusegem. In 2007, she joined the group of Dr. Russinova and she is currently involved in research on brassinosteroids in Arabidopsis.
 

Predoctoral Fellow-Genome editing, cutting-edge technology for a sustainable agriculture

I am a new plant mamma. In 2016, I graduated from Bangladesh Agricultural University with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. Then I have completed my Master’s degree in Crop Botany from same the same university in 2018. Following that, in 2020, I have joined as a faculty member in the department of Crop Botany at Khulna Agricultural University, Bangladesh. I started working in the lab of Prof. Dr. Frank Van Breusegem at the VIB-Ugent Center for Plant System Biology in Ghent in January 2025 as a predoctoral fellow. For grass peas with a reduced toxin level and a better potential yield, I will concentrate on genome editing. We will attempt to revel out the correlation of ODAP in tolerance to stress in Grass Pea.

Lindsy graduated with a Master in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from Ghent University in 2023. During her Master thesis in the lab of Prof. Frank Van Breusegem (VIB-UGent PSB), she focused on the role of cysteine oxidative post-translational modifications, more specifically protein sulfinylation, and the role of sulfiredoxin in the oxidative stress response in plants. After her Master thesis, she started in the lab of Prof. Bert De Rybel (VIB-UGent PSB), working on the Plant Single Cell Platform. During her time on the platform she gained novel knowledge and skills using single cell and single nuclei transcriptomics technologies. Later in 2024, Lindsy started her PhD journey in the group of Prof. Inge De Clercq (VIB-UGent PSB) where she studies the post-translational regulation mechanisms of membrane-bound transcription factors during mitochondrial retrograde signaling.

Matilde Sanches graduated in 2017 as master of Biodiversity and Plant Biotechnology at University of Coimbra, Portugal. During her master thesis, under the guidance of Prof. Jorge Canhoto, she studied developmental epigenetics throughout somatic embryogenesis of tamarillo plant (Solanum betaceum, Cav.), performing experiments and developing skills (particularly immunofluorescence microscopy) at Pilar S. Testillano's lab in CIB-CSIC, Madrid, Spain. After a one-year experience as Project Developer - DIVA project (H2020) and SKAN Platform activities - at INOVISA (Lisbon, Portugal) and at the Centre for Investigation and Transference of Technology to Community Development (CITT - Maputo, Mozambique), she enrolled in the Plants for Life Doctoral Program in 2019, from ITQB NOVA (Lisbon, Portugal). During her PhD project, focussing on the study of quantitative genetics and mechanisms behind water stress tolerance in grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), she had the opportunity to foster a collaboration between Dr. Carlota Vaz Patto's lab (PlantX group, ITQB NOVA, Oeiras, Portugal) and Prof. Frank Van Breusegem'lab (Oxidative Stress Signalling group, PSB-VIB, Ghent, Belgium). Her main scientific interests are I&D in the agronomic sector, particularly stress resilience in plants, the genetics and epigenetics underlying it; and more important, the potential applications of that field of knowledge in crop improvement and breeding programs, with a particular fondness for orphan crops. More recent (but obviously related) passions are statistics, experimental design and data science, and it was in that framework that she recently joint Hilde Nelissen's Systems Biology of Yield group at PSV-VIB (Ghent, Belgium).