Martin Parniske is a German biologist with a specialisation in genetics, microbiology and biochemistry. He is university professor and head of the Institute of Genetics at the Faculty of Biology of the
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
.
Parniske's scientific focus is on the molecular interaction between plants and
symbiotic
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...
and
pathogenic
In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...
organisms including
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...
,
fungi
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from ...
,
oomycetes
Oomycota forms a distinct phylogenetic lineage of fungus-like eukaryotic microorganisms, called oomycetes (). They are filamentous and heterotrophic, and can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Sexual reproduction of an oospore is the result ...
and insects.
Biography
Parniske studied biology, microbiology, biochemistry and genetics at the universities of
Konstanz
Konstanz (, , locally: ; also written as Constance in English) is a university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south of Germany. The city houses the University of Konstanz and was th ...
and
Marburg
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximate ...
, Germany. From 1986 until 1991 he performed diploma and doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dietrich Werner on chemical communication of the root with the
bacterial microbiome with a focus on
flavonoids
Flavonoids (or bioflavonoids; from the Latin word ''flavus'', meaning yellow, their color in nature) are a class of polyphenolic secondary metabolites found in plants, and thus commonly consumed in the diets of humans.
Chemically, flavonoids ...
and
isoflavonoids
Isoflavonoids are a class of flavonoid phenolic compounds, many of which are biologically active. Isoflavonoids and their derivatives are sometimes referred to as phytoestrogens, as many isoflavonoid compounds have biological effects via the estro ...
. From 1992 until 1994 Parniske carried out biochemical studies on the interaction of plant
transcription factor
In molecular biology, a transcription factor (TF) (or sequence-specific DNA-binding factor) is a protein that controls the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA, by binding to a specific DNA sequence. The fu ...
s and
DNA at the Institute of Biochemistry of the
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 ...
in Cologne, Germany as a postdoctoral fellow funded by the
German Research Foundation
The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...
. From 1994 until 1998 he studied the evolution of plant disease resistance genes in the lab of
Jonathan D. G. Jones. In 1998, Parniske was appointed as an independent group leader at the
Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK. In 2004 he accepted a call for the chair of Genetics at the Faculty of Biology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
[ From 2011 until 2013 he acted as the Dean of the Faculty of Biology of the LMU Munich. As the head of the Institute of Genetics at the Faculty of Biology of the LMU Munich, Martin Parniske teaches students at the Bachelor, Master and Doctoral (Dr. rer. nat.) level. Topics taught include Genetics, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Genetics and Society, Plant Nutrition and Sustainable Food Production.
]
Scientific contribution
Genetics of plant root endosymbiosis
Parniske identified a set of plant mutants defective in plant root symbioses
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...
with both arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from ...
and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria. These mutants enforced the idea that plant root endosymbioses with bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...
and fungi
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from ...
share a common genetic basis. Because arbuscular mycorrhiza dates back to the first land plant and the root nodule symbiosis is much younger, this common gene set revealed that the nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis evolved by co-opting genes from the existing arbuscular mycorrhizasymbiosis
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...
. By map-based identification of so-called “common symbiosis genes”, the Parniske lab contributed to the identification of several components directly or indirectly involved in a plant signal transduction process required for both symbioses. These include a receptor-like kinase
In biochemistry, a kinase () is an enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of phosphate groups from high-energy, phosphate-donating molecules to specific substrates. This process is known as phosphorylation, where the high-energy ATP molecule don ...
, nucleoporins, potassium
Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosphe ...
channels required for nuclear calcium oscillations and a nuclear localized complex comprising a calcium-and-calmodulin dependent protein kinase and its phosphorylation target CYCLOPS, a DNA-binding transcriptional activator. The discovery of these genes and the postulated signal transduction processes had a major impact on this research field. The Parniske lab discovered that CYCLOPS is an interactor and phosphorylation substrate of the calcium- and calmodulin-dependent protein kinase CCaMK. Moreover, the role of CYCLOPS, initially annotated as a protein with unknown function, was identified as a DNA-binding transcriptional activator.[Singh, S, Katzer K, Lambert J, Cerri M, and Parniske M. “CYCLOPS, a DNA-Binding Transcriptional Activator, Orchestrates ]Symbiotic
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...
Root Nodule Development.” Cell Host & Microbe 15, no. 2 (February 12, 2014): 139–52. . Research in the Parniske lab clarified the role of the CCaMK/CYCLOPS complex as a major regulatory hub in symbiotic signal transduction.
Evolution of plant disease resistance genes
Parniske joined the laboratory of the plant geneticist Jonathan D.G. Jones at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, United Kingdom in November 1994. He addressed the fundamental question in plant disease resistance research, how plants can keep pace with the evolutionary speed of microbial pathogens that have a much shorter generation time than their host plants and thus evade recognition by plant receptors through diversifying selection. Parniske discovered that recombination within and between resistance gene clusters is a key to the evolution of novel recognition specificities of pathogenic microbes by plants.
Chemical communication between bacteria and plant roots
During his doctoral work Parniske observed that incompatible genotypes of soybean
The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses.
Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu an ...
and rhizobia
Rhizobia are diazotrophic bacteria that fix nitrogen after becoming established inside the root nodules of legumes (Fabaceae). To express genes for nitrogen fixation, rhizobia require a plant host; they cannot independently fix nitrogen. In gene ...
can lead to the induction of defense responses inside root nodules including the accumulation of phytoalexins, plant toxins produced upon biotic stress. Parniske discovered that the soybean phytoalexin glyceollin is toxic for soybean rhizobia and that low concentrations of isoflavonoids secreted by soybean roots induce a resistance against this antibiotic plant compound.
Awards
In 2013 Parniske received the European Research Council
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...
Advanced Grant for research on the “Evolution of the molecular mechanisms underlying the nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis”. He received postdoctoral fellowships from the German Research Foundation (DFG), the EMBO
Embo ( gd, Eurabol, IPA: iaɾəpɔɫ̪ is a village in the Highland Council Area in Scotland and the former postal county of Sutherland, about north-northeast of Dornoch.
On 16 July 1988, Embo declared itself independent from the rest of the ...
and the European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
. In 2014 Parniske received the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher award in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents in the field of animal and plant sciences.The world's most influential scientific minds 2014, p. 90
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Selected publications
List of publications, Research Gate
List of publications, ORCID
List of publications Thomson Reuters Researcher ID
*
External links
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parniske, Martin
Living people
21st-century German biologists
German geneticists
Year of birth missing (living people)
Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich