We are excited to announce that Ann-Kathrin Maurer joined our team as a PostDoc. She did her PhD with Phil Poole at Oxford University (UK) and is a dedicated microbiologist, who now allows us to dive deeper into the microbial site of the root nodule symbiosis. Red more here.

We had the German Southwest TV/radio station SWR visiting us for half a day to compile a brief report about our work, which went already online today. Thanks to Henriette and the entire team for managing and supporting all of that. You can access the report here.

One year after the film team visited our lab, the full documentry on “Fertilizers for the Future” is online at the German/French TV station ARTE. In their documetary Martin Gronemeyer and Michaela Kirst together with their team show different approaches from plasma reactors to self-fertilizing plants scientist take to work for a more sustainable agriculture. This includes our work in ENSA and CIBSS with Magda and Casandra showing their work. Thanks to everyone involved. You can watch the documentary here (only availabe in German and French):

Happy to share our newest preprint. We developed guidelines and analysis workflows for FLIM Imaging in plants. Multiplexing with spectrally overlapping fluorophores in plants is now possible. Have a look. Any feedback is more than welcome. Lace B, Krohn, P, Batzenschlager M, Fieß V, Molina D, Ragni L, Ott T (2026). Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging in Plants: Practical guidelines for multiplexing, label-free imaging and data analysispre-print: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.11.731528v1

We are grateful to Yue Rui and José Dinneny from Stanford University for involving us into this story. In this paper, Yue and her colleagues show that the cellulose synthase complex, remorin proteins and SHOU4/4L, negative regulators of CSC exocytosis, act as central components to mediate plasma membrane connectivity to the cell wall under stress conditions. Congratulations to all authors. Rui Y, Zaoralová M, Dwyer WP, Reyes AV, Grismer TS, Abel NB, Jayachandran D, Chundawat SPS, Ott T, Kieber JJ, Dahlberg PD, Xu S-L, Dinneny JR (2026). Plant cell wall-plasma membrane attachments mediate stress resilience through cellulose synthase complexes and remorinsCell; online, June 2pre-print: bioRxiv; https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.01.664786

We identified the Medicago truncatula subtilisin-like protease (subtilase, SBT) 12a acting as a novel regulator of symbiosome functionality and maintenance. Loss-of-function mutations in SBT12a led to severe symbiotic defects with nodules of sbt12a being characterized by high level induction of defense/senescence-related genes. Using untargeted proteomic High-efficiency Undecanal-based N-Termini EnRichment (HUNTER) we identified and individually confirmed specific SBT12a target proteins that are involved in plant defense responses and symbiosome maintenance. This positions SBT12a as a central host factor controlling symbiosome performance. Zhang G, Stockert F, Mantz M, Rodriguez-Franco M, van Beveren F, Hernández-Reyes C, Lace B, Yang W, Mancilla H, Maric A, Nebel N, Hartman S, Kraft C, Su C, Delaux…

Happy to share our latest paper together with the lab of Pengbo Liang. Here, we show that a formin protein mediates a polarity switch in root hairs that enables the switch from polar root hair growth and curling to the onset of membrane invagination and infection thread formation. Enjoy reading. Qiao L, Sun H, Tang J, Hernández-Reyes C, Lace B, Knerr J, Schulze E, Lee T, Keller J, Libourel C, Yao J, Zhao F, Ni Y, Jia Y, Xu X, Yang G, Zhang L, Zhang Y, Grosse R, Tian C, Oldroyd GED, Delaux P-M, Ott T*, Liang P* (2026). Nanodomain-localized formin gates symbiotic microbial entry in legume and Solanaceous plants.Science;…

Happy to share our newest paper. It all started when Chao was still in the lab. He took the project with him to China and finished it off. Here, we show that cell wall pectins are continuously secreted to the symbiosome space. As they have antimicrobial activity, the are constantly cleared by symbiosis-specific polygalacturonases during active symbiotic nitrogen fixation. Have a look:Gao Y, Chen L, Yang W, Yue T, Li Q, Chen K, Yuan J, Li X, Ott T*, Su C* (2025)Symbiosome functionality in Medicago truncatula nodules requires continuous clearing of pectins from the symbiosome spaceNature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67404-1

In this study, led by Jesús Montiel and Jens Stougaard, we demonstrate that the expansin EXPA1 contributes to intra- as well as intercellular infection in Lotus japonicus and localizes to infection sites including the transcellular passage cleft. The corresponding mutants show severe defects in infection thread formation.Congratulations to all authors involved including Beatrice Lace from our team and thanks for allowing us to contribute to this nice piece of work. Original publication: Montiel J, Garcia-Soto I, Monroy-Morales E, Lace B, Robledo-Gamboa M, Vestergaard M, Sandal N, Ott T, Stougaard J (2025)The Lotus japonicus alpha Expansin EXPA1 is recruited during intracellular and intercellular rhizobial colonizationThe Plant Journal; 124, e70639pre-print: bioRxiv; https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.08.674960

Again, Marta Rodriguez Franco, head of our EM lab, is co-organizing the next EMBO practical course on “Quantitative Electron Microscopy for Cell Biology”, which will be held in Ceske Budejovice from 22 June to 02 July 2026. Save your spot by registering now!