Kerstin Kaufmann: The molecular conductors of the blossom world

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In Potsdam, the biologist Kerstin Kaufmann is investigating the key regulators of blossom development. Source: Kerstin Kaufmann

11.09.2013  - 

Already as a child, Kerstin Kaufmann was enthused by the variety and splendour of the blossoms in her family garden. Today, she is investigating at the molecular level how the plant world has managed to produce such a wide spectrum of forms and functions in the floral organs. At the University of Potsdam, the 36-year-old studies the complex interaction and hierarchy structure of proteins and genes in blossom development. In 2012, Kaufmann was honoured with the 2012 Sofja Kovalesvskaja Award for her earlier work on the subject. The plant researcher is now putting together a working group using the €1.6 million from the award. The biologist, who previously researched for seven years in the Netherlands, has made transcription factors her speciality. These factors are regarded as the ‘conductors’ of the molecular symphony that takes place when a blossoming occurs in a flower.

As a child, Kerstin Kaufmann loved the huge garden of her family home in Altmark in Saxony-Anhalt. In this time, she developed a soft spot not only for living plants and flowers but also for old botanical atlases and natural history books. “It’s the variety of flower colours and shapes that fascinated me,” says Kaufmann today. As the budding scientist soon realised, a blossom can be considered a masterpiece both from the outside and in. The event is the result of a complex development process in which hundreds of genes and proteins spring tenderly into action, coordinated both in time and in space. Like in an orchestra, there are also participants in blossom development that give the overall process its central momentum. Among the most important molecular conductors in the flower are the so-called transcription factors. These are proteins that bind to the DNA and, from there, turn other specific genes on and off. 

Multilayered concert comprising hundreds of factors

What is the functioning of the molecular interaction in blossom development? Are there specific master regulators in the world of plants? These questions have stayed with Kerstin Kaufmann since her time as a biology student at Braunschweig in 1999, from where she undertook a sojourn to Uppsala, Sweden. There, she experienced more about the evolution of blossom development. “I thought it was extremely exciting, and when I returned to Germany I looked for researchers who specialised in this area,” she says. Her search was fulfilled at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, where she found plant geneticist Günter Theißen, who shortly afterwards moved to the University of Jena. Here, he would set to work with Kerstin Kaufmann, whose dissertation and thesis both centred on the key regulators of blossom development, the so-called MADS box factors.

Each cell type has its own regulatory profile

The favourite study object of the biologist is the thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana. From an aesthetic perspective, the small white flowers of the plant – a relative of canola – are not able to keep up with the likes of Orchids and Snapdragons. On the other hand, they are ideally suited to genetic experimentation. Today, no other plant is described in as much detail as the Arabidopsis with respect to the key factors in the blossoming process. “But we know very little about the interaction of the main switches at the molecular level,” says Kaufmann. Backed by an arsenal of the latest molecular-biological methods, the Potsdam-based researcher is now hoping to clarify exactly how transcription factors bind to specific gene sequences, and which genes they switch on or off. Thereby, this detective work makes use of some serious high tech, namely the latest generation of sequencing technologies, proteomics analyses, and chromatin experiments. “Without looking at the epigenetics, you can’t hope to understand the molecular events,” stresses Kaufmann. Her vision: “We are trying to identify a regulatory signature for each cell type in blossom development,” says the biologist.

The blossoming of an Arabidopsis, taken with a scanning electron microscope. Source: Jürgen Berger / MPI Tübingen

Tracking down the master regulator

Already during her postdoctoral studies at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands in 2005, Kaufmann was hot on the heels of a master regulator known as AP1, which eventually resulted in an article in the respected journal Science (2010, Vol. 328, p.85). An often name-checked fellow of the university town of Wageningen is none other than Marie Curie. “I very much appreciated the direct and open style of my Dutch colleagues, but also the much-needed space to carry out my research,” says the developmental biologist. In 2011 she established her own research group in Wageningen, became Assistant Professor, and a tenure track option offered the prospect of a long-term position. “But I was curious for something new,” explains Kaufmann. And this opened up the possibility of a return to Germany, in this case via an application to the Sofya Kovalesvskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In summer 2012, there was a letter on her doorstep: Kaufmann had been awarded the third largest researcher grant in Germany. As a guest researcher under Bernd Müller-Röber at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biology of the University of Potsdam, she will now be spending the next five years looking for other key regulators in blossom development. “Here in Potsdam, there’s a super infrastructure available for plant scientists,” says Kaufmann.

Her husband, a native of Spain whom she met in the course of her work, has joined her in the region of the German capital. He is now working as a computational biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. In the apartment that they shared until recently, there was a critical feature that was lacking, although this has fortunately changed for the better. In August, Kerstin Kaufmann finally moved with her husband to Potsdam. “Finally, we also have a small garden.”

Author: Philipp Graf