Recognizing Plant Cell authors: Christina Müdsam

Christina Müdsam, co-first author of Vernalization Alters Sink and Source Identities and Reverses Phloem Translocation from Taproots to Shoots in Sugar Beet (Beta vulgaris)

Current Position: Post-Doc, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Department Biology, Division of Biochemistry, Germany

Education: PhD from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Division of Molecular Plant Physiology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Norbert Sauer; MSc in Molecular Science from the FAU and BSc in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Hull, UK

Non-scientific Interests: gardening, hiking, eating ice cream

Brief Bio: Surrounded by sweet colleagues with a focus on sugar transport(ers) the research during my PhD centred around how the transporters they worked with (as well as other transmembrane proteins) were sorted to their destination membrane. Specifically, I examined protein sorting in Arabidopsis mutants deficient for members of the cytosolic protein sorting machinery and analysed sorting motifs in some (mostly vacuolar) of their potential cargoes. After I finished my PhD, I got the chance to join Prof. Uwe Sonnewald’s group and to literally go “back to the (tap)roots”: I became part of the Betahiemis project, in which we study abiotic stress (more specifically, cold stress) and its effects on sugar transport in sugar beet. Since then, I have had the pleasure of working with great people on an exciting crop and, recently, even got the opportunity to step foot in our biocomputing lab, where I am currently (and hopefully for a little longer) entering the world of bioinformatics and where – thanks to Dr. José Maria Corral and his team – I’m learning new fascinating things every day.