Humboldt Research Award brings Ivy-League Professor Klaas van Wijk to Potsdam
Dutch plant scientist Klaas van Wijk, professor at Cornell University in New York State, will spend six months at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPI-MP) to take advantage of the synergy between his lab and the expertise of the scientists here
It is not Klaas van Wijk’s first time in Golm. In the past few years he has made several short visits to the institute, but, finally, he will stick around for a little longer. “It couldn’t be better, almost everything the people here work on is also on the agenda of my lab at Cornell University,” he explains enthusiastically. His host at the MPI-MP is Professor Mark Stitt, but cooperation partners for his projects are plentiful.
Van Wijk is interested in chloroplasts, the green sugar factories in plants that turn carbon dioxide into highly energetic compounds through the process of photosynthesis. While all plants contain chloroplasts, they don’t all use the same mechanism for carbon fixation.
Some, like maize and sugar cane, are much more effective than others because they can assimilate the carbon dioxide better. That appears to be a great advantage, especially when conditions are harsh and water or nitrogen supply is limited, and the plants produce a lot more biomass, i.e. food and feed. Only three percent of all terrestrial plant species belong to the group of the effective C4 plants, but thanks to their special photosynthesis mechanism, they account for twenty to thirty percent of all terrestrial biomass.
“For almost ten years my lab has been trying to figure out what drives C4 differentiation, and what cellular adaptations are needed for efficient C4 photosynthesis,” van Wijk explains. The role of regulated protein turnover in chloroplast specialization is of particular interest to his lab. The cooperation with Mark Stitt and also Ralph Bock, whose department focuses on chloroplast research as well, could lead to substantial progress in this area of research.
The expertise in the fields of systems biology and bioinformatics in Golm is incomparable
Besides his work on chloroplast differentiation, he also focuses on systems biology- the holistic approach to analyze plants. Since, naturally, this kind of research generates huge amounts of data, scientists depend on bioinformatics tools to evaluate and interpret the data. “In systems biology as well as in bioinformatics the scientists in Golm are among the best, you don’t find this expertise just anywhere,” van Wijk says impressed.
At his hometown university in the small town of Ithaca his lab has developed a plant protein database (PPDB) that adopted the MapMan system for functional classification of proteins, which in turn was developed in Mark Stitt’s lab in Golm. “MapMan is a very valuable tool to organize and evaluate data,” van Wijk states and says he aims to further expand this fruitful cooperation. “But really I’m just here to listen and learn,” he adds humbly.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany. The Foundation maintains a network of well over 25,000 Humboldtians from all disciplines in more than 130 countries worldwide - including 49 Nobel Prize winners.
[CS]