Our research is on plant development
Our main research interest is to unravel the mechanisms regulating plant development, with a focus on the roles of the cell wall, phytohormones, endomembrane trafficking and molecular signalling in controlling cell shape and tissue morphogenesis. We primarily use the model plant Arabidopsis to answer our research questions but we also work on species of more applied interest for forestry and agriculture, including poplar, spruce, eucalyptus, lupin and tomato.
We are fascinated by the amazing ability of plants to continuously adapt their morphology in response to both internal and environmental signals. Our work addresses the regulation of these morphological adjustments at cell and molecular levels in a wide range of organs including leaves, hypocotyls, apical hooks and various types of roots. You can take a look at what our group members are currently working on at our Group members page or check out our previously published work at our Publications page.
Watch a short movie about our research!
In 2024, our university made a short movie about Stéphanie and her research interests, to celebrate her promotion to professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Watch it below!
We have been awarded a prestigious European Research Council grant to map auxin dynamics in plant cells!
We are delighted to announce that Stéphanie will lead a large, collaborative research project, awarded the prestigious Synergy grant by the European Research Council, to investigate dynamic auxin signatures in plant cells. The project will be a close collaboration together with the groups of Ondřej Novák from the Institute of Experimental Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic, Jürgen Kleine-Vehn from the University of Freiburg, Germany and Alexander Jones from the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK. The project, Starmorph (Unravelling Spatio-Temporal Auxin Intracellular Redistribution for Morphogenesis), which was funded 10 million euro over 6 years, will start in 2025. We will use Arabidopsis thaliana apical hooks as models to understand how auxin dynamics at organ, tissue, cell and organelle scales can integrate cellular responses with external signals during plant development. Read more about our plans here!
We have been awarded a large Wallenberg grant to study plant cell identity acquisition!
We are delighted to announce that Stéphanie will lead a large research project awarded over 32 million Swedish crowns by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, with the aim to investigate plant cell identity, starting in 2023. Our co-researchers in this 5-year multidisciplinary project, Decoding cell fate with positional information, will be Stéphane Verger from Umeå University, Peter Marhavý from SLU, Eleni Stavrinidou from Linköping University and Maria Tenje from Uppsala University. We will use Arabidopsis thaliana root epidermal hair and non-hair cells as models to understand which positional information controls a cell’s identity fate relative to its position within a complex organ. We will explore whether this positional information consists of chemical, geometric, mechanical and/or electrical signals, with our most ambitious goal being to develop a totally novel “plant-on-chip”, consisting of an artificial root model bioprinted on a microchip. Read more about our plans here!
We are also thankful to the following for funding our work
