Diving into plant-insect interactions through the world simplest nectar form
- Beschreibung
Do you know some plants release nectar at where they have been bitten by insects?
Do you know this type of nectar attracts ants to come and protect the plants by praying on herbivores?
Do you want to know how all of this works?
Background:
Extrafloral nectar (EFNs) are well studied as indirect plant defence. Its function is not to attract pollinators but to attract predacious animals, usually ants, to help plants to defend themselves. Nectar is generally released from secretory structures called nectaries. However, our model system, bittersweet nightshade, Solanum dulcamara, releases a special type of EFNs at where they have been bitten by herbivores. Wound nectar is the simplest form of EFN to date. Just like EFNs, this unique wound nectar (WN) also attracts ants for indirect defence.
We aim to investigate how this nectar release from wounds is regulated by the bittersweet nightshade. We already found out that WN is inducible by the phytohormone jasmonic acid (JA) and created a JA-deficient mutant. However, our data suggest that other signals are involved in regulating WN release.
Benefits :
You can be involved in developing hypotheses and experiments to understand how WN is regulated and learn different technics, i.e., HPLC, LC-MS, qPCR, and general experimental design, data collection, and analysis skills.
- Projektzeitraum
- Sommersemester 2025
- Bewerbungszeitraum
- 01. bis 13.04.2025
- Durchführung
- nach Absprache
- Details zu Projektzeitraum und Durchführung
The experiments involving phytohormones can be conducted during winter and summer semesters.
- Studienfach
-
Agrarbiologie
Agrarwissenschaften
Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics & Subtropics
Biologie
Biologie - Lehramt
Biotechnologiy
Crop Sciences
Landscape Ecology
Environmental Protection and Agricultural Food Production
Environmental Science - Soil, Water and Biodiversity - Betreuende
- Lu Li, Prof.Dr. Anke Steppuhn
- Institut
- Institut für Biologie (190) (Molecular Botany (190a))
- Sprache
- englisch
- Teilnehmendenanzahl
-
min. 1, max. 4
(2 Kleingruppen mit max. 2 Teilnehmenden ) - Arbeitsaufwand
-
ca. 120 Stunden pro Teilnehmende:r
| 4
ECTS-Punkte
Arbeitsaufwand (Stunden und ggf. ECTS) sind ungefähre Angaben. Die tatsächlich vergebenen ECTS-Punkte ergeben sich aus der tatsächlich geleisteten Arbeit.
- Für dieses Projekt ist kein Motivationsschreiben des Studierenden erforderlich
- Projektart
- experimentell
- Lernziele
-
Die Teilnehmende lernen in diesem Projekt:
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Set goals and design their own experiments
- Conduct background literature research
- Learn and apply various techniques, including HPLC, LC-MS, and qPCR
- Perform data collection and analysis
- Develop scientific writing and presentation skills
- Anmerkungen für Studierende
Under the big project, students are able to design small experiments depending on their interests. Working loads are based on the type of experiments; schedules are flexible.
Please contact us if you are curious about the project or have any questions: lu.li@uni-hohenheim.de
- Schlagworte
- EFNs, plant-insect interactions, Datenanalyse, Versuchsaufbau. Versuchsdurchführung