Completed Projects with IPB as Partner

It is the main goal of the PhytoHäm project to improve the chances of elderly people suffering from a chronic blood disorder to continue their autonomous life. For that purpose, we are seeking for specifically active and well-tolerated plant-based substances that could be used as novel dietary supplements (nutraceuticals) or – in case of very strong biological activity – could be further developed as pharmaceutical drug. Many plant ingredients provide anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory effects as well as many other properties with high value for human nutrition and medical care. The PhytoHäm project was created to combine the complementary expertises and resources of both cooperation partners, in order to investigate the effects and application potentials of selected plant ingredients and plant extracts, respectively, with respect to the therapy of elderly people suffering from chronic blood disorders.

Funding: European Regional Development Fund, ERDF
Part of the Research Association Autonomie im Alter - Modellregion Sachsen-Anhalt
Funding Period: 07/2019 - 09/2022
Coordinator: Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg
Coordinator contact: Prof. Dr. med. Thomas Fischer, University Hospital Magdeburg
Partner: Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, IPB, Department of Bioorganic Chemistry
Contact at IPB: Prof. Dr. Ludger Wessjohann and Dr. Robert Rennert

Funding: European Regional Development Fund, ERDF (Project No. ZS/2019/07/99747)
Part of the Research Association Autonomie im Alter - Modellregion Sachsen-Anhalt
Funding Period: 06/2020 - 12/2022
Coordinator: Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK)
Contact at the IPK: Dr. Paride Rizzo
Contact at the IPB: Dr. Katrin Franke and Prof. Dr. Ludger Wessjohann

This interdisciplinary project aims to identify ecologically endangered and therapeutically valuable plants from Sub-Saharan countries and to ensure their sustainable use. Tri-Sustain implements a three‐pronged integrated approach towards the goals of bioeconomic value‐chains, ecological and therapeutic sustainability. The accompanying Graduate School further ensures personnel and partnership sustainability.

The CHIC project aims to develop chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) varieties that can be used to produce dietary fibre with enhanced prebiotic effects to promote gut health. At the same time, given its biosynthetic capacity, high yields and low agronomic requirements, chicory has significant potential as production host in molecular farming. CHIC aims to harness this potential to cultivate chicory for the extraction of other types of health-related compounds (terpenes) as potential lead molecules for drug development. To achieve this, new chicory varieties must be developed. However, conventional chicory breeding is currently exceptionally time-consuming and thus, chicory is a highly relevant case where new plant breeding technologies can make a real difference. Furthermore, CHIC explores the interactions between technological potential and societal acceptance of modern plant breeding. The consortium will evaluate the technological performance of these new plant breeding technologies, as well as the safety, environmental, regulatory, socio-economic and broader societal issues associated with them.

The 'German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure – de.NBI' is a national infrastructure supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research providing comprehensive, high-quality bioinformatics services to users in life sciences research and biomedicine. The partners organize training events, courses and summer schools on tools, standards and compute services provided by de.NBI to assist researchers to more effectively analyse their data. The IPB is a de.NBI partner and member of the Center for Integrative Bioinformatics (CIBI). It maintains and integrates metabolite annotation software into the de.NBI infrastructures and provides service around standards-compliant data management and reuse of data from metabolomics experiments.

The aim of this project is to initiate the scientific and technological cooperation between Indonesian and German partners and to jointly contribute to the identification of naturally occurring substances in Indonesian plants and fungi with antiinfective effects, potentially suitable for the development of new active pharmaceutical compounds.

The RTG 1591 includes twelve different groups from the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry organized in three sections (molecular mechanisms, human diseases and plant physiology and immunity). The aim is to explore how the post-transcriptional control of gene expression determines cell fate and diseases on the basis of animal and plant model organisms. The IPB participates in the RTG 1591 with the project "The role of natural antisense long non-coding RNAs in plants", led by Dr. Selma Gago Zachert from the Molecular Signal Processing Department.

DrugBioTune is part of the InfectControl2020 research alliance that aims at developing new strategies for early recognition, control and successful approaches to fight infectious diseases. Specific objectives of DrugBioTune are the development of innovative techniques for the discovery of natural product-based antibiotics, antimycotics, and antiparasitics, the identification of new antibacterial, antifungal and antiparasitic agents, the evaluation of their potential for human and veterinary as well as agrochemical applications.

The project "BE LOW" aims to predict in which local neighbourhood of a regional species community a newcoming plant might perform best. There will be a particular emphasis on traits with a functional link to belowground processes, such as root traits and root exudates. Plant roots secrete a large number of compounds into the rhizosphere. The pattern of these secreted compounds, which can be analysed by mass spectrometry-based methods, is genetically determined but also modulated by environmental factors. The acquired data will be used to test if survival and performance can be predicted from the statistical probability of co-occurrence of a species in a specific local neighbourhood. In summary, the combination of functional biodiversity research, community ecology and functional root research will fill an important gap between above- and belowground processes.

In the coming decade a significant number of the 500.000.000 European (EU/EEA) citizens will have their genome determined routinely. This will be complemented with much cheaper acquisition of the metabolome of biofluids which will link the genotype with metabolome data that captures the highly dynamic phenome and exposome (i.e. all the external influences on the human organism) of patients. This will enable the development of a truly personalised and evidence-based medicine. The collection of such information will pose dramatic demands on biomedical data management and compute capabilities in Europe. Predications are in the order of exabyte amounts of biomedical phenotyping data. PhenoMeNal will develop and deploy an integrated, secure, permanent, on-demand service-driven, privacy-compliant and sustainable e-infrastructure for the massive amount of data that will be generated by metabolomics applications now entering research and clinic.

The aim of the RADAR project is to set up and establish an interdisciplinary infrastructure for long-term preservation and publication of research data. These services should facilitate data management and enhance the reuse of research data, in a discipline-agnostic way. As a scientific project-partner, the IPB actively participates in the development and maintenance of a generic metadata scheme, while using own NMR data to test and verify the functionality of the system during its progress.

The aim of this CRC 648 is the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of information transfer between plants and pathogens and within plant cells. The partners are the MLU Halle-Wittenberg, the IPK Gatersleben and the IPB, which is responsible for 3 projects: PAMP-mediated pathogen defense in Solanum tuberosum (Prof. Sabine Rosahl), Functional analysis of MAP-kinase cascades in plant immunity response (Dr. Justin Lee and Prof. Dierk Scheel) and Function of IQD1, founding member of the Arabidopsis IQD protein family (Dr. Katharina Bürstenbinder and Prof. Steffen Abel).

Innate immunity is an ancient form of defense against microbial infection that is based on recognition of small pathogen-specific molecules by special receptors and a subsequent signaling cascade within the plant cells. The aim of the project is to elucidate the Calcium-mediated cellular processes from early perception to the transcription machinery with a focus on the analysis of MAPKs in Calcium-regulated transcription during plant immune response. The results of this research will in the long term contribute to improve the disease resistance of plants. The project is carried out by the Tel Aviv University, Israel (as coordinator), the Freie Universität Berlin and the IPB, and receives funding from the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. Contact at the IPB: Prof. Dierk Scheel and Dr. Justin Lee.

This EU-funded project is a global effort to enable free and open sharing of metabolomics data coordinated by the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute. The project is named „Developing an efficient e-infrastructure, standards and data-flow for metabolomics and its interface to biomedical and life science e-infrastructures in Europe and world-wide” and has brought together 14 European metabolomics data providers to set and promote community standards. The aim is to establish an e-infrastructure for storing and analyzing metabolomics data and integrating them with other -omics data sets from the life sciences.

Microbial pathogens rob their hosts of nutrients and can kill plants, while symbiotic fungi and bacteria provide phosphate and nitrogen and improve plant health. Despite the differences there are numerous parallels between these two types of interaction. Both microbial pathogens and symbionts reprogramme plant cellular development. This Priority Programme aims to uncover the molecular switches that both cause and restrict disease in one system and lead to symbiosis in another. The IPB took part with 4 projects: Jasmonate detection (Prof. Bettina Hause), Calcium signalling induced by MAMPs from pathogenic and beneficial organisms in Arabidopsis thaliana (Dr. Justin Lee), Non-host resistance of Arabidopsis thaliana against Phytophthora infestans (Prof. Sabine Rosahl and Prof. Dierk Scheel), and Analysis of the PUB22 ubiquitin ligase mediated regulation of exocyst-dependent exocytosis during plant immune responses (Dr. Marco Trujillo).

The research cluster ProNet-T³ funded as part of a BMBF funding program aimed at strengthening the already existing expertise in protein research in Halle. At the IPB, researchers worked on the subproject "Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Pathogen Defense through Pattern Recognition". The focus here was on plant defense of pests via recognition of so-called pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Possible pathogens are recognized by receptors in the plant and thus trigger a defense reaction via complex signal networks. The aim of this subproject was to functionally analyze relevant MAPK substrates and to elucidate the importance of phosphorylation of MAPK substrates for their stability, structure and activity. Furthermore, the mechanisms by which bacterial effector proteins alter the function of MAPK elements and thus allow a successful colonization of the plants were investigated.

The BIONEXGEN collaborative project pursued the overall goal to develop key enzyme classes and technologies for use in eco-efficient manufacturing processes in the chemical industries. Biocatalysis - i.e. the use of natural catalysts, enzymes, to undertake chemical transformations of organic chemicals - has become much more commonplace in recent years, and it is now an important strategy in synthetic chemistry. BIONEXGEN focused on developing the next generation of biocatalysts tailored to the needs of the chemical producing industries. The IPB was involved with two of the project's work packages.

The goal of RTG 1026 is to understand the relationship between protein folding and biological action. Protein folding from the denatured state, both in vitro and enzymatically controlled, is a focal point in Halle. Thirteen groups from different departments at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg try to examine the effects of such transitions on protein-lipid, protein-nucleic acid and protein-protein interactions at a biophysical, biochemical and cell biological level. Two groups at the IPB (Dr. Nico Dissmeyer and Prof. Steffen Abel) are associated members of the GRK 1026, which is coordinated by the MLU Halle-Wittenberg.

Dynamic signaling pathways regulate plant responses to pathogens by involving protein phosphorylation events. These events lead to specific stress-induced gene expressions, accumulation of plant hormones, and presumably also other metabolites. This project aimed to extend the knowledge on the level at and down-stream of signal perception.  This includes regulation of protein phosphorylation, identification of target genes and complex protein associations as well as plant cell responses by metabolic changes.