The Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) is a

basic research Basic research, also called pure research or fundamental research, is a type of scientific research with the aim of improving scientific theories for better understanding and prediction of natural or other phenomena. In contrast, applied resear ...

institute in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. It was founded in 2000 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) to promote cutting-edge research in the field of

molecular A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioche ...

plant biology Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

. The GMI employs about 130 people. Its founding director was Dieter Schweizer, and the current scientific director is Magnus Nordborg. The institute is named after

Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel, Augustinians, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Br� ...

, who is also known as the "Father of

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

," due to his scientific work and the fact that he studied at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

in the mid-19th century.

Research

Research is conducted at GMI on numerous aspects of

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

. These include basic mechanisms of

epigenetics In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "o ...

cell biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

plant pathogens Plant pathology (also phytopathology) is the scientific study of diseases in plants caused by pathogens (infectious organisms) and environmental conditions (physiological factors). Organisms that cause infectious disease include fungi, oomyc ...

interactions,

developmental biology Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...

and

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and pop ...

. There are eight independent research groups as of March 2023, led by: * Frédéric Berger:

Chromatin Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells. The primary function is to package long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important roles in r ...

architecture and function * Yasin Dagdas:

Autophagy Autophagy (or autophagocytosis; from the Ancient Greek , , meaning "self-devouring" and , , meaning "hollow") is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-dependent re ...

mediated cellular quality control mechanisms in plants *

Liam Dolan Liam Dolan One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: is the Sherardian Professor of Botany in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxfor ...

: Development and

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

land plants The Embryophyta (), or land plants, are the most familiar group of green plants that comprise vegetation on Earth. Embryophytes () have a common ancestor with green algae, having emerged within the Phragmoplastophyta clade of green algae as siste ...

* Arturo Marí-Ordóñez: Mechanisms of recognition and

silencing Silencing is a visual illusion in which a set of objects that change iluminancehue transposons A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transpo ...

in plants * Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid: Epigenetic changes in plants * Magnus Nordborg: Population genetics * Silvia Ramundo:

Chloroplast A chloroplast () is a type of membrane-bound organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant and algal cells. The photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll captures the energy from sunlight, converts it, and stores it in ...

biogenesis Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized that certain forms, such as fleas, could arise fr ...

and

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...

quality control * Kelly Swarts: Tree-ring

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

Scientific Advisory Board

A Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) evaluates research at GMI on an annual basis. The SAB consists of independent international experts. Their main task is to provide feedback on the quality of scientific work to the Institute's management and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Composition (as of March 2023): * Richard Durbin, Department of Genetics,

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

( UK) * Niko Geldner, Department of Plant Molecular Biology,

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switzer ...

(

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

) * Harmit Malik, Division of Basic Sciences,

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, formerly known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and also known as Fred Hutch or The Hutch, is a cancer research institute established in 1975 in Seattle, Washington. History The center grew out o ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

(

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

) * Krishna Niyogi, Plant and Microbial Biology,

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(USA) * Keiko Sugimoto, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

) *

Nick Talbot Nicholas José Talbot FRS FRSB (born 5 September 1965) is Group Leader and Executive Director at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich. Nick Talbot Education Talbot was educated at Midhurst Grammar School. He went on to study at the Universi ...

, The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich (UK) * Miltos Tsiantis, Department of Comparative Development and Genetics,

Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research The Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research was founded in Müncheberg, Germany in 1928 as part of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft. The founding director, Erwin Baur, initiated breeding programmes with fruits and berries, and basic resear ...

(

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

) * Susan Wessler, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences,

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

(USA)

Scientific Infrastructure

The Institute is located together with other research institutes at the

Vienna Biocenter The Vienna BioCenter is a cluster of life science research institutes and biotechnology companies located in the 3rd municipal District of Vienna, Austria. It grew around the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), which opened in 19 ...

in Vienna's 3rd district. The

campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

has over 1,900 scientists from more than 70 countries. Also located at the Vienna BioCenter are the

Institute of Molecular Biotechnology The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) is an independent biomedical research organisation founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The institute employs around 250 ...

(IMBA), the

Research Institute of Molecular Pathology The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) is a biomedical research center, which conducts curiosity-driven basic research in the molecular life sciences. The IMP is located at the Vienna Biocenter in Vienna, Austria. The institute emplo ...

(IMP) and Max Perutz Labs Vienna - a joint institute of the

and the

Medical University of Vienna The Medical University of Vienna (German: ''Medizinische Universität Wien'') is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It is the direct successor to the faculty of medicine at the University of Vienna, founded in 1365 by Rudolf IV, Duk ...

. The research groups also use services provided by the Vienna BioCenter Core Facilities (VBCF) such as high-throughput plant phenotyping and

next generation sequencing DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The ...

Science Communication

The GMI aims to bring the topics of plants and plant research closer to the general public. For this purpose, the GMI has developed quiz search

mobile games A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to ...

on the topic of plants in Vienna (Botanic Quest, Naturdenkmäler Wien Quest) as well as an information platform for children (gmi4kids).

References

Annual report of the GMI 2021 (PDF, 31.4 MB)GMI Official websiteVienna BioCenterBotanic QuestNatural Monuments Vienna Quest (Naturdenkmäler Wien Quest)gmi4kids
{{authority control Molecular biology institutes Research institutes in Austria Genetics or genomics research institutions