Ute Roessner

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Ute Roessner

Born1971
Nationality Australian, German
EducationUniversity of Potsdam, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiogy
Employer(s) University of Melbourne
Australian National University
Known forPlant metabolomics
TitleProfessor

Professor Ute Roessner AM FAA (born 1971) is a biochemist who specialises in plant metabolomics. Until 2022, she has been professor and head of the School of Biosciences at the University of Melbourne. In 2022, she joined The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

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Early life and career

Roessner received a Diploma in Biochemistry, from the University of Potsdam and the John Innes Institute in Norwich, in the UK. She then was awarded a PhD in Plant Biochemistry, from the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Germany.[ citation needed ]

Her career involves conducting work in metabolomics, biochemistry and lipidomics, as well as mass spectrometry. Roessner played a role in establishing a metabolomics platform research in 2003, within the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, and also in 2007, in Metabolomics Australia. [1]

Roessner's research has received media attention, from her early life in East Berlin, regarding the Berlin Wall coming down, [2] as well as a Nature paper on the genome of Chenopodium quinoa [3] and research on insecticides, showing low doses of insecticides can reduce insect survival rates. [4] Roessner was also involved in research on how invasive fungal diseases, which can be life-threatening, can be able to adapt and then survive within human populations. [4]

Roessner's research has involved using mass spectrometry to understand spatial metabolite and the analysis of lipids, to further understanding of the metabolism of roots under saline stress. Roessner has been awarded funding for mass spectrometry research on lipids, metabolites and proteins in plants. [5] She has been head of school, Biosciences at the University of Melbourne, between 2018 and 2022. [6]

In 2021 Roessner was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia the Queen's Birthday Honours for "significant service to tertiary education, particularly to the biosciences". [7] She was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women as a Trailblazer in 2021 [8] and elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2022. [9]

Prizes and awards

Prizes and awards
YearAward
2013Australian Research Council Future Fellow [10]
2021Member of the Order of Australia [10]
2021Victorian Honour Roll of Women [10]
2022Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science [9]
2023ANZSMS Morrison Medal [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quinoa</span> Edible plant in the family Amaranthaceae

Quinoa is a flowering plant in the amaranth family. It is an herbaceous annual plant grown as a crop primarily for its edible seeds; the seeds are rich in protein, dietary fiber, B vitamins and dietary minerals in amounts greater than in many grains. Quinoa is not a grass but rather a pseudocereal botanically related to spinach and amaranth, and originated in the Andean region of northwestern South America. It was first used to feed livestock 5,200–7,000 years ago, and for human consumption 3,000–4,000 years ago in the Lake Titicaca basin of Peru and Bolivia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imidacloprid</span> Chemical compound

Imidacloprid is a systemic insecticide belonging to a class of chemicals called the neonicotinoids which act on the central nervous system of insects. The chemical works by interfering with the transmission of stimuli in the insect nervous system. Specifically, it causes a blockage of the nicotinergic neuronal pathway. By blocking nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, imidacloprid prevents acetylcholine from transmitting impulses between nerves, resulting in the insect's paralysis and eventual death. It is effective on contact and via stomach action. Because imidacloprid binds much more strongly to insect neuron receptors than to mammal neuron receptors, this insecticide is more toxic to insects than to mammals.

<i>Chenopodium album</i> Species of flowering plant in the goosefoot family Chenopodiaceae

Chenopodium album is a fast-growing annual plant in the genus Chenopodium. Though cultivated in some regions, the plant is elsewhere considered a weed. Common names include lamb's quarters, melde, goosefoot, wild spinach and fat-hen, though the latter two are also applied to other species of the genus Chenopodium, for which reason it is often distinguished as white goosefoot. Chenopodium album is extensively cultivated and consumed in Northern India, and Nepal as a food crop known as bathua.

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

Lipidomics is the large-scale study of pathways and networks of cellular lipids in biological systems The word "lipidome" is used to describe the complete lipid profile within a cell, tissue, organism, or ecosystem and is a subset of the "metabolome" which also includes other major classes of biological molecules. Lipidomics is a relatively recent research field that has been driven by rapid advances in technologies such as mass spectrometry (MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, dual polarisation interferometry and computational methods, coupled with the recognition of the role of lipids in many metabolic diseases such as obesity, atherosclerosis, stroke, hypertension and diabetes. This rapidly expanding field complements the huge progress made in genomics and proteomics, all of which constitute the family of systems biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metabolomics</span> Scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites

Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind", the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles. The metabolome represents the complete set of metabolites in a biological cell, tissue, organ, or organism, which are the end products of cellular processes. Messenger RNA (mRNA), gene expression data, and proteomic analyses reveal the set of gene products being produced in the cell, data that represents one aspect of cellular function. Conversely, metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell, and thus, metabolomics provides a direct "functional readout of the physiological state" of an organism. There are indeed quantifiable correlations between the metabolome and the other cellular ensembles, which can be used to predict metabolite abundances in biological samples from, for example mRNA abundances. One of the ultimate challenges of systems biology is to integrate metabolomics with all other -omics information to provide a better understanding of cellular biology.

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

The metabolome refers to the complete set of small-molecule chemicals found within a biological sample. The biological sample can be a cell, a cellular organelle, an organ, a tissue, a tissue extract, a biofluid or an entire organism. The small molecule chemicals found in a given metabolome may include both endogenous metabolites that are naturally produced by an organism as well as exogenous chemicals that are not naturally produced by an organism.

<i>Chenopodium</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Amaranthaceae

Chenopodium is a genus of numerous species of perennial or annual herbaceous flowering plants known as the goosefoot, which occur almost anywhere in the world. It is placed in the family Amaranthaceae in the APG II system; older classification systems, notably the widely used Cronquist system, separate it and its relatives as Chenopodiaceae, but this leaves the rest of the Amaranthaceae polyphyletic. However, among the Amaranthaceae, the genus Chenopodium is the namesake member of the subfamily Chenopodioideae.

<i>Chenopodium pallidicaule</i> Species of plant

Chenopodium pallidicaule, known as cañihua, canihua or cañahua and also kaniwa, is a species of goosefoot, similar in character and uses to the closely related quinoa(Chenopodium quinoa).

Adrienne Elizabeth Clarke is Professor Emeritus of Botany at the University of Melbourne, where she ran the Plant Cell Biology Research Centre from 1982 to 1999. She is a former chairman of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, former Lieutenant Governor of Victoria (1997–2000) and former Chancellor of La Trobe University (2011–2017).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nitenpyram</span> Insecticide

Nitenpyram is a chemical frequently used as an insecticide in agriculture and veterinary medicine. The compound is an insect neurotoxin belonging to the class of neonicotinoids which works by blocking neural signaling of the central nervous system. It does so by binding irreversibly to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nACHr) causing a stop of the flow of ions in the postsynaptic membrane of neurons leading to paralysis and death. Nitenpyram is highly selective towards the variation of the nACHr which insects possess, and has seen extensive use in targeted, insecticide applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Methiocarb</span> Chemical compound

Methiocarb is a carbamate pesticide which is used as an insecticide, bird repellent, acaricide and molluscicide since the 1960s. Methiocarb has contact and stomach action on mites and neurotoxic effects on molluscs. Seeds treated with methiocarb also affect birds. Other names for methiocarb are mesurol and mercaptodimethur.

The METLIN Metabolite and Chemical Entity Database is the largest repository of experimental tandem mass spectrometry and neutral loss data acquired from standards. The tandem mass spectrometry data on over 870,000 molecular standards is provided to facilitate the identification of chemical entities from tandem mass spectrometry experiments. In addition to the identification of known molecules, it is also useful for identifying unknowns using its similarity searching technology. All tandem mass spectrometry data comes from the experimental analysis of standards at multiple collision energies and in both positive and negative ionization modes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laser ablation electrospray ionization</span>

Laser ablation electrospray ionization (LAESI) is an ambient ionization method for mass spectrometry that combines laser ablation from a mid-infrared (mid-IR) laser with a secondary electrospray ionization (ESI) process. The mid-IR laser is used to generate gas phase particles which are then ionized through interactions with charged droplets from the ESI source. LAESI was developed in Professor Akos Vertes lab by Peter Nemes in 2007 and it was marketed commercially by Protea Biosciences, Inc until 2017. Fiber-LAESI for single-cell analysis approach was developed by Bindesh Shrestha in Professor Vertes lab in 2009. LAESI is a novel ionization source for mass spectrometry (MS) that has been used to perform MS imaging of plants, tissues, cell pellets, and even single cells. In addition, LAESI has been used to analyze historic documents and untreated biofluids such as urine and blood. The technique of LAESI is performed at atmospheric pressure and therefore overcomes many of the obstacles of traditional MS techniques, including extensive and invasive sample preparation steps and the use of high vacuum. Because molecules and aerosols are ionized by interacting with an electrospray plume, LAESI's ionization mechanism is similar to SESI and EESI techniques.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Clarke Fenselau</span> American scientist

Catherine Clarke Fenselau is an American scientist who was the first trained mass spectrometrist on the faculty of an American medical school; she joined Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1968. She specializes in biomedical applications of mass spectrometry. She has been recognized as an outstanding scientist in the field of bioanalytical chemistry because of her work using mass spectrometry to study biomolecules.

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

Exometabolomics, also known as 'metabolic footprinting', is the study of extracellular metabolites and is a sub-field of metabolomics.

Marjorie Janice Groothuis Horning was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. She was considered to be a pioneer of chromatography for her work in developing new techniques and applying them to the study of drug metabolism. She demonstrated that drugs and their metabolites can be transferred from a pregnant woman to her developing child, and later through breast milk, from a mother to a baby. Horning's work made possible the prevention of birth defects, as doctors began to warn of the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and smoking during pregnancy.

Ram Rajasekharan is an Indian plant biologist, food technologist and a former director of the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Known for his studies on plant lipid metabolism, Rajasekharan is a former professor of eminence at the Indian Institute of Science and an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy as well as the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Siuzdak</span> American chemist

Gary Siuzdak is an American chemist best known for his work in the field of metabolomics, activity metabolomics, and mass spectrometry. His lab discovered indole-3-propionic acid as a gut bacteria derived metabolite in 2009. He is currently the Professor and Director of The Center for Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Siuzdak has also made contributions to virus analysis, viral structural dynamics, as well as developing mass spectrometry imaging technology using nanostructured surfaces. The Siuzdak lab is also responsible for creating the research tools eXtensible Computational Mass Spectrometry (XCMS), METLIN, METLIN Neutral Loss and Q-MRM. As of January 2021, the XCMS/METLIN platform has over 50,000 registered users.

David S. Wishart is a Canadian researcher and a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta. Wishart also holds cross appointments in the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. Additionally, Wishart holds a joint appointment in metabolomics at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. Wishart is well known for his pioneering contributions to the fields of protein NMR spectroscopy, bioinformatics, cheminformatics and metabolomics. In 2011, Wishart founded the Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC), which is Canada's national metabolomics laboratory.

Nina Wedell is a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. She was appointed as the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow in 2019. She will investigate the evolutionary dynamics of sexual conflict and insecticide resistance genes at the University of Melbourne. Professor Wedell has pioneered the field of sexual selection, and is best known for her research on female multiple mating, polyandry. Her work has encompassed many insect systems including butterflies, moths, and flies.

References

  1. "Roessner Lab" . Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  2. Vilisoni Wilson, Lito (8 November 2019). "When the Wall came down". Pursuit. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  3. Jarvis, David E.; Ho, Yung Shwen; Lightfoot, Damien J.; Schmöckel, Sandra M.; Li, Bo; Borm, Theo J. A.; Ohyanagi, Hajime; Mineta, Katsuhiko; Michell, Craig T.; Saber, Noha; Kharbatia, Najeh M. (February 2017). "The genome of Chenopodium quinoa". Nature. 542 (7641): 307–312. Bibcode:2017Natur.542..307J. doi: 10.1038/nature21370 . hdl: 10754/622874 . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   28178233. S2CID   4447822.
  4. 1 2 "'Insect Armageddon': Low doses of the insecticide, Imidacloprid, cause blindness in insects: Findings show even small doses of insecticides reduce capacity of insects to survive". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  5. "Vanderbilt and University of Melbourne fund $344,000 in joint research projects". Vanderbilt University. 9 November 2011. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  6. "Professor Ute Roessner AM". ARC Research Hub for Smart Fertilisers. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  7. "Professor Ute Roessner". It's an Honour. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  8. "Victorian Honour Roll of women inductees". www.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  9. 1 2 "Academy announces 2022 Fellows for outstanding contributions to science". Australian Academy of Science. 26 May 2022. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
  10. 1 2 3 Smith, Katherine (24 June 2021). "Australian Honours". About us. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  11. "Awards". ANZSMS Membership. Retrieved 24 December 2023.