Passionate about plant biology?
Curious about how phytochromes and light signalling shape plant growth?
Join our research team for an exciting Bachelor's or Master's thesis or an internship! Explore our available projects below and find the one that sparks your interest. Get in touch with us for more details and to check availability!
When reaching out, please include:
| Project | Methods | Suited for* | Duration (weeks) |
Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. How the TOR complex 1 regulates growth and defense in response to shade. | physiological experiments, gene expression analysis, mutant analysis, immunoblotting, carbohydrate analysis, chemical/hormone treatments, bioassays, microscopy. | MSc, BSc, SP2 | 10+ | Sarah Courbier |
| 2. Cloning and testing plasmid constructs for inducible expression of light signalling components in plants. | Goldengate Assembly, sequence analysis, handling of tobacco plants, transient transformation of tobacco plants, fluorescence microscopy and/or luciferase imaging, transformation of Arabidopsis plants | Bsc, PM, E | 4+ | Andreas Hiltbrunner |
| 3. Analysis of Arabidopsis light signalling complexes by co-localisation studies using microscopy. | Goldengate Assembly/generation of plasmid constructs, sequence analysis, transient transformation of mustard seedlings and/or tobacco plants, epifluorescence microscopy | BSc, PM, E | 4+ | Andreas Hiltbrunner |
| 4. Physiological and genetic characterisation of Arabidopsis thaliana light signalling mutants. | Arabidopsis cultivation, DNA extraction, PCR, genotyping, sequence analysis, quantification of hypocotyl growth and anthocyanin levels, protein extraction, western blotting | BSc, PM, E | 4+ | Andreas Hiltbrunner |
| 5. Generation of CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutants in the moss Physcomitrium patens. | Goldengate Assembly, sequence analysis, transformation of Physcomitrium patens, genotyping of Physcomitrium plants, analysis of mutant phenotype | MSc, BSc, SP2, PM, E | 4+ | Andreas Hiltbrunner |
| 6. Phenotypic and genetic characterisation of moss (Physcomitrium patens) light signalling mutants. | cultivation of Physcomitrium patens, DNA extraction, PCR, genotyping, sequence analysis, quantification of gene expression by RT-qPCR, documentation of protonema branching and gametophore growth | BSc, PM, E | 6+ | Andreas Hiltbrunner |
| 7. Investigating the subfunctionalisation of phytochromes in the moss Physcomitrium patens by generation and characterisation of PHY1/3-PHY5 chimeric phytochromes. | cultivation of Physcomitrium patens, Goldengate Assembly, transformation of Physcomitrium, characterisation of physiological responses, sequence analyses | MSc, SP2, E | 4+ | Andreas Hiltbrunner |
| 8. Characterization of a protein linking phytochrome signaling to epigenetics in Arabidopsis thaliana. | Yeast-2-hybrid, Goldengate Assembly/generation of plasmid constructs, sequence analysis, transient transformation of mustard seedlings, epifluorescence microscopy, physiological characterization of different overexpression and mutant lines, ChIP-qPCR, Arabidopsis transformation by floral dip | MSc, BSc, SP2, PM, E | 4+ | Laura Schmid |