Detlef Weigel

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Detlef Weigel
Weigel portrait 2016.jpg
Weigel in 2016
Born (1961-12-15) December 15, 1961 (age 62)
Dannenberg (Elbe), Germany
NationalityGerman and US (naturalized)
Alma mater Bielefeld University, University of Cologne
Awards McClintock Prize (2019) [1]
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize [ citation needed ]
Scientific career
Fields Biology
Institutions Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
University of Tübingen
Salk Institute
Doctoral advisor Herbert Jäckle  [ de ]
Website weigelworld.org

Detlef Weigel (born 1961 in Lower Saxony, Germany) is a German American [2] scientist working at the interface of developmental and evolutionary biology.

Contents

Education

Weigel was an undergraduate in biology and chemistry at the universities of Bielefeld and Cologne. In 1986, he graduated with a Diploma in biology for this thesis on Drosophila neurogenesis with the late José Campos-Ortega. In 1988, he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen. During his PhD work with Herbert Jäckle  [ de ],[ citation needed ] he discovered the founding member of an important class of transcription factors, the Forkhead/FOX proteins. [3] [4] In 1988, he graduated with a PhD (summa cum laude) from the University of Tübingen.

Career and research

Weigel began to work with plants during his postdoctoral research with Elliot M. Meyerowitz at Caltech, where he cloned the floral regulator LEAFY from Arabidopsis thaliana . [5] From 1993 to 2002, he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. In 2002, he accepted an appointment as Scientific Member and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, where he founded the Department for Molecular Biology. He is also an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute and the University of Tübingen. In 2012, Weigel co-founded the plant bioinformatics startup company Computomics in Tübingen. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of eLife. [6]

During the 1990s, Weigel mostly studied the development of individual flowers and how the onset of flowering is regulated. His group made important discoveries in both areas. Together with Ove Nilsson, he demonstrated that transfer of the LEAFY gene from Arabidopsis thaliana to aspen trees was sufficient to reduce the time to flowering from years to months. [7] Weigel and his team isolated the FT gene, [8] which was later found to be an important component of the mobile signal inducing flowering. [9] New genetic tools developed by his group led to the discovery of the first microRNA mutant in plants. [10]

Through his study of factors that control the onset of flowering, a quintessential adaptive trait, Weigel became interested in more general questions of evolution. Apart from work on genetic variation in environment-dependent developmental processes, his group is known for the generation of extensive genomic resources, such as the first haplotype map for a non-mammalian species. [11] [12] To further exploit and advance the understanding of genetic variation, Weigel and colleagues initiated the 1001 Genomes project for Arabidopsis thaliana . Related to this is a new area of interest, in genetic barriers. In collaboration with Jeffery Dangl, his group discovered that such barriers in plants are often associated with autoimmunity. They could show that in certain hybrid offspring, specific gene products contributed by one of the parents may be inappropriately recognized as foreign and pathogenic, and thus trigger pervasive cell death throughout the plant. [13] Most of the causal genes encode components of the immune system, indicating that there are constraints on the assembly of an optimal immune system. [14] Several cases have been examined in detail and shown to be due to direct protein-protein interactions. [15] [16]

Honors and awards

Related Research Articles

Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and differentiation of stem cells in the adult organism.

<i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i> Model plant species in the family Brassicaceae

Arabidopsis thaliana, the thale cress, mouse-ear cress or arabidopsis, is a small plant from the mustard family (Brassicaceae), native to Eurasia and Africa. Commonly found along the shoulders of roads and in disturbed land, it is generally considered a weed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meristem</span> Type of plant tissue involved in cell proliferation

In cell biology, the meristem is a type of tissue found in plants. It consists of undifferentiated cells capable of cell division. Cells in the meristem can develop into all the other tissues and organs that occur in plants. These cells continue to divide until they become differentiated and lose the ability to divide.

Florigens are proteins capable of inducing flowering time in angiosperms. The prototypical florigen is encoded by the FT gene and its orthologs in Arabidopsis and other plants. Florigens are produced in the leaves, and act in the shoot apical meristem of buds and growing tips.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ABC model of flower development</span> Model for genetics of flower development

The ABC model of flower development is a scientific model of the process by which flowering plants produce a pattern of gene expression in meristems that leads to the appearance of an organ oriented towards sexual reproduction, a flower. There are three physiological developments that must occur in order for this to take place: firstly, the plant must pass from sexual immaturity into a sexually mature state ; secondly, the transformation of the apical meristem's function from a vegetative meristem into a floral meristem or inflorescence; and finally the growth of the flower's individual organs. The latter phase has been modelled using the ABC model, which aims to describe the biological basis of the process from the perspective of molecular and developmental genetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primordium</span> Organ in the earliest recognizable stage of embryonic development

A primordium in embryology, is an organ or tissue in its earliest recognizable stage of development. Cells of the primordium are called primordial cells. A primordium is the simplest set of cells capable of triggering growth of the would-be organ and the initial foundation from which an organ is able to grow. In flowering plants, a floral primordium gives rise to a flower.

Elliot Meyerowitz is an American biologist.

The MADS box is a conserved sequence motif. The genes which contain this motif are called the MADS-box gene family. The MADS box encodes the DNA-binding MADS domain. The MADS domain binds to DNA sequences of high similarity to the motif CC[A/T]6GG termed the CArG-box. MADS-domain proteins are generally transcription factors. The length of the MADS-box reported by various researchers varies somewhat, but typical lengths are in the range of 168 to 180 base pairs, i.e. the encoded MADS domain has a length of 56 to 60 amino acids. There is evidence that the MADS domain evolved from a sequence stretch of a type II topoisomerase in a common ancestor of all extant eukaryotes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypersensitive response</span>

Hypersensitive response (HR) is a mechanism used by plants to prevent the spread of infection by microbial pathogens. HR is characterized by the rapid death of cells in the local region surrounding an infection and it serves to restrict the growth and spread of pathogens to other parts of the plant. It is analogous to the innate immune system found in animals, and commonly precedes a slower systemic response, which ultimately leads to systemic acquired resistance (SAR). HR can be observed in the vast majority of plant species and is induced by a wide range of plant pathogens such as oomycetes, viruses, fungi and even insects.

Superman is a plant gene in Arabidopsis thaliana, that plays a role in controlling the boundary between stamen and carpel development in a flower. It is named for the comic book character Superman, and the related genes kryptonite (gene) and clark kent were named accordingly. It encodes a transcription factor. Homologous genes are known in the petunia and snapdragon, which are also involved in flower development, although in both cases there are important differences from the functioning in Arabidopsis. Superman is expressed early on in flower development, in the stamen whorl adjacent to the carpel whorl. It interacts with the other genes of the ABC model of flower development in a variety of ways.

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Resistance genes (R-Genes) are genes in plant genomes that convey plant disease resistance against pathogens by producing R proteins. The main class of R-genes consist of a nucleotide binding domain (NB) and a leucine rich repeat (LRR) domain(s) and are often referred to as (NB-LRR) R-genes or NLRs. Generally, the NB domain binds either ATP/ADP or GTP/GDP. The LRR domain is often involved in protein-protein interactions as well as ligand binding. NB-LRR R-genes can be further subdivided into toll interleukin 1 receptor (TIR-NB-LRR) and coiled-coil (CC-NB-LRR).

LEAFY is a plant gene that causes groups of undifferentiated cells called meristems to develop into flowers instead of leaves with associated shoots.

Gerd Jürgens is a plant developmental biologist and emeritus Director of the Cell Biology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and Head of the Center for Plant Molecular Biology (ZMBP) at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen. He has published extensively in leading journals, including eight papers in the journal Nature as well as various articles in the journals Cell, Science, Journal of Cell Biology and The Plant Journal.

In molecular biology mir-396 microRNA is a short RNA molecule. MicroRNAs function to regulate the expression levels of other genes by several mechanisms.

Arabidopsis thaliana is a first class model organism and the single most important species for fundamental research in plant molecular genetics.

June Nasrallah is Barbara McClintock Professor in the Plant Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University. Her research focuses on plant reproductive biology and the cell-cell interactions that underlie self-incompatibility in plants belonging to the mustard (Brassicaceae) family. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003 for this work and her contributions generally to our understanding of receptor-based signaling in plants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James C. Carrington</span> American plant biologist

James C. Carrington is a plant biologist and the current president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. In 2005 he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2008 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3) is a plant-specific gene that encodes the hydroxyproline-rich glycoprotein and is required for the function of the circadian clock. ELF3 is one of the three components that make up the Evening Complex (EC) within the plant circadian clock, in which all three components reach peak gene expression and protein levels at dusk. ELF3 serves as a scaffold to bind EARLY FLOWERING 4 (ELF4) and LUX ARRHYTHMO (LUX), two other components of the EC, and functions to control photoperiod sensitivity in plants. ELF3 also plays an important role in temperature and light input within plants for circadian clock entrainment. Additionally, it plays roles in light and temperature signaling that are independent from its role in the EC.

Moisés Expósito-Alonso is a Spanish scientist and assistant professor of global change biology at the University of California, Berkeley, member of the Innovative Genomics Institute, and inaugural Freeman Hrabowski Scholar from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research includes the study of plants and how climate change affects their evolution.

References

  1. 1 2 "Detlef Weigel will receive the Barbara McClintock Prize 2019". www.mpg.de.
  2. ↑ "Detflef Weigel, National Academy of Science". www.nasonline.org.
  3. ↑ Weigel D, Jürgens G, Küttner F, Seifert E, Jäckle H (1989). "The homeotic gene fork head encodes a nuclear protein and is expressed in the terminal regions of the Drosophila embryo". Cell. 57 (4): 645–658. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(89)90133-5. PMID   2566386. S2CID   12317967.
  4. ↑ Weigel D, Jäckle H (1990). "The fork head domain, a novel DNA-binding motif of eucaryotic transcription factors?". Cell. 63 (3): 455–456. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(90)90439-L. PMID   2225060. S2CID   1986657.
  5. ↑ Weigel D, Alvarez J, Smyth DR, Yanofsky MF, Meyerowitz EM (1992). "LEAFY controls floral meristem identity in Arabidopsis". Cell. 69 (5): 843–859. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(92)90295-N . PMID   1350515.
  6. ↑ "Leadership team".
  7. ↑ Weigel D, Nilsson O (1995). "A developmental switch sufficient for flower initiation in diverse plants". Nature. 377 (6549): 495–500. Bibcode:1995Natur.377..495W. doi:10.1038/377495a0. PMID   7566146. S2CID   4346606.
  8. ↑ Kardailsky I, Shukla VK, Ahn JH, Dagenais N, Christensen SK, Nguyen JT, Chory J, Harrison MJ, Weigel D (1999). "Activation tagging of the floral inducer FT". Science. 286 (5446): 1962–1965. doi:10.1126/science.286.5446.1962. PMID   10583961.
  9. ↑ Wigge PA, Kim MC, Jaeger KE, Busch W, Schmid M, Lohmann JU, Weigel D (2005). "Integration of spatial and temporal information during floral induction in Arabidopsis". Science. 309 (5737): 1056–1059. Bibcode:2005Sci...309.1056W. doi:10.1126/science.1114358. PMID   16099980. S2CID   20425470.
  10. ↑ Palatnik JF, Allen E, Wu X, Schommer C, Schwab R, Carrington JC, Weigel D (2003). "Control of leaf morphogenesis by microRNAs". Nature. 425 (6955): 257–263. Bibcode:2003Natur.425..257P. doi:10.1038/nature01958. PMID   12931144. S2CID   992057.
  11. ↑ Clark RM, Schweikert G, Toomajian C, Ossowski S, Zeller G, Shinn P, Warthmann N, Hu TT, Fu G, Hinds DA, Chen H, Frazer KA, Huson DH, Schölkopf B, Nordborg M, Rätsch G, Ecker JR, Weigel D (2007). "Common sequence polymorphisms shaping genetic diversity in Arabidopsis thaliana". Science. 317 (5836): 338–342. Bibcode:2007Sci...317..338C. doi:10.1126/science.1138632. PMID   17641193. S2CID   39874240.
  12. ↑ Kim S, Plagnol V, Hu TT, Toomajian C, Clark RM, Ossowski S, Ecker JR, Weigel D, Nordborg M (2007). "Recombination and linkage disequilibrium in Arabidopsis thaliana". Nat. Genet. 39 (9): 1151–1155. doi:10.1038/ng2115. PMID   17676040. S2CID   31681171.
  13. ↑ Bomblies K, Lempe J, Epple P, Warthmann N, Lanz C, Dangl JL, Weigel D (2007). "Autoimmune response as a mechanism for a Dobzhansky-Muller-type incompatibility syndrome in plants". PLOS Biol. 5 (9): e23. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050236 . PMC   1964774 . PMID   17803357.
  14. ↑ Chae E, Bomblies K, Kim ST, Karelina D, Zaidem M, Ossowski S, Martín-Pizarro C, Laitinen RA, Rowan BA, Tenenboim H, Lechner S, Demar M, Habring-Müller A, Lanz C, Rätsch G, Weigel D (2014). "Species-wide genetic incompatibility analysis identifies immune genes as hot spots of deleterious epistasis". Cell. 159 (6): 1341–1351. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.10.049. PMC   4269942 . PMID   25467443.
  15. ↑ Tran, Diep T.N.; Chung, Eui-Hwan; Habring-Müller, Anette; Demar, Monika; Schwab, Rebecca; Dangl, Jeffery L.; Weigel, Detlef; Chae, Eunyoung (2017). "Activation of a Plant NLR Complex through Heteromeric Association with an Autoimmune Risk Variant of Another NLR". Current Biology. 27 (8): 1148–1160. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.03.018. PMC   5405217 . PMID   28416116.
  16. ↑ Li, Lei; Habring, Anette; Wang, Kai; Weigel, Detlef (2020). "Atypical Resistance Protein RPW8/HR Triggers Oligomerization of the NLR Immune Receptor RPP7 and Autoimmunity". Cell Host & Microbe. 27 (3): 405–417.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2020.01.012 . PMID   32101702.
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