Evan Slater (MBio student, 9 months, May 2023-June 2024). Evan worked with Jie on the inhibition of different P69 orthologs by Epi1 of Phytophthora infestans, and studied their role in late bight immunity.
Maria Minone (MBiochem student, 9 months, September 2023-June 2024) Maria worked with Brian to validate inhibition of plant-secreted hydrolases by AI-predicted inhibitors by Pseudomonas syringae.
Xavier St John (MBiochem student, 9 months, September 2023-June 2024). Xav worked with Emma to investigate the role of peptidoglycan perception in suppressing transient protein expression upon agroinfiltration.
Chidam Mahadevan (Postdoc, 24 months, January 2022-Decemer 2023). Chidam established Crosslinking Mass Spectrometry (CLMS) and used this to discover alterations in the apoplast of Nicotiana benthamiana upon infection with three different strains of Pseudomonas syringae.
Pierre Buscaill (Postdoc, 87 months, September 2016 - November 2023). Pierre discovered that apoplastic glycosidase BGAL1 initates the release of the flagellin elicitor from bacteria (Science 2019). He also established the Agromonas assay (TPJ 2021) and studied flagellin degradation (bioRxiv) and the role of glycans in protecting against elicitor release. Pierre started his own laboratory at Bristol University.
Isobel Dodds (PhD student, 52 months, January 2019-April 2023). Issy developed ways to increase recombinant protein expression upon agroinfiltration by suppressing immunity through changing pH, expressing RxLR effectors, and silencing immune components, including the cold shock protein receptor CORE (PBJ 2023).
Alice Godson (PhD student, 49 months, April 2019-April 2023). Alice wrote a meta-analysis on apoplastic proteases in defence (JXB 2020) and investigated why and how secreted hydrolases of N. benthamiana are suppressed during Pseudomonas syringae infection, with a focus on glycosidase PR3 (New Phytologist 2023) and protease RD21.
Shijian Song (Postdoc, 12 months, July 2022-June 2023). Shijian selected genome edited lines lacking proteases and immunity genes and studied processing of the Covid Spike protein until he returned to China to start a company in molecular pharming.
Sam Oswald (MBiochem student, 9 months, August 2022-June 2023). Sam worked with Shijian and studied the source of variation in transient expression by agroinfiltration using GFP and RFP reporter proteins.
Ieuan Corcoran (MBiochem student, 9 months, September 2022-June 2023). Ieuan worked with Konstantina and studied the accumulation of IgGs carrying subcellular targeting signals upon transient expression in N. benthamiana.
Edan Jackson (MBiol student, 9 months, May 2022-June 2023). Edan worked with Tee and studied extracellular protein homeostasis in Nicotiana benthamiana.
Alice Penrose (MBiol student, 9 months, May 2022-June 2023). Alice worked with Jie and studied the role of two secreted papain-like cysteine proteases of the late blight pathogen Phytphthora infestans.
Mariana Schuster (Postdoc, 48 months, March 2019-February 2023). Mariana studied immune protease Pip1 of tomato and engineered this protease to enhance late blight resistance (PBJ 2023). Mariana moved to IBP Halle, Germany to initate her own research lab on receptor shedding in plants.
Felix Homma (PhD student, 57 months, January 2018 - September 2022). Felix is from Heidelberg, Germany and characterised extracellular defence responses in various plant species by proteomics and bioinformatics. He established AplhaFold screens in the lab and used this to dicover novel hydrolase inhibitors secreted by plant pathogens (Nat. Comm. 2023).
Laura Ossorio (PhD student, 49 months, September 2018 - September 2022). Laura is from Asturias, Spain, and studied apoplast manipulation by the oomycete late blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans.
Changlong Chen (visiting postdoc, 12 months, November 2021-October 2022). Changlong is from Beijing, China and studied the role of proteases in the release and stability of cold shock protein elicitors and their precursors (bioRxiv).
Lauren Eddie (MBio student, 9 months, September 2021 - May 2022). Lauren studied the role of RD21 in immunity in Nicotiana benthamiana together with Alice Godson.
Freddie King (MBio student, 9 months, October 2021 - May 2022). Freddie tested the impact of RxRL effectors on transient protein expression in Nicotiana benthamiana with Issy Dodds.
Ajay Patel (MBio student, 9 months, October 2021 - May 2022). Ajay studied the role of a subtilase in regulating the induction of PR proteins in Nicotiana benthamiana with Pierre Buscaill.
Philippe Varennes-Jutras (Postdoc, 48 months, October 2017 - September 2021). Philippe is from Quebec, Canada, and worked on Molecular Pharming within the 'Newcotiana' project, generating protease knock-out lines by genome editing. He also discovered proteases targeted by SlCys8 (PBJ 2019) and explored the use of bioluminescent Agrobacterium (AgroLUX, TPJ 2021).
Shivani Malik (PhD student, 71 months, October 2015 - August 2021). Shivani is from New Delhi, India and has investigated the recognition of pathogen-derived protease inhibitors in wild tomato and potato.
Maria Font Farre (PhD student, 51 months, January 2017 - March 2021). Maria is from Catalonia, Spain, and has established labeling of cytochrome P450 enzymes in Arabidopsis and Zymoseptoria. She also established photoaffinity labeling of glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) and worked closely together with Syngenta and with Dan Brown, who was synthesising probes in the lab of Jonathan Burton at the Chemistry Department.
Kyoko Morimoto (Postdoc, 62 months, March 2015 - April 2020). Kyoko is from Shiga Prefecture, Japan, and pioneered chemical proteomics, by working on probes to label metacaspases, hyperreactive cysteines, ascorbate peroxidases (Plant Physiol. 2019) and metalloproteases (New Phytologist 2022). She also publised a review on ABPP in plants (PCP 2016) and a comment on metacaspases releasing DAMPs (Curr. Biol. 2019). She moved on to Syngenta and then started her own Molecular Pharming company.
Emma Thomas (PhD student, 45 months, January 2017 - September 2020). Emma is from Somerset, UK, and has uncovered protein processing events generated during the hypersensitive response and by vacuolar processing enzymes. She has moved on to a science consultancy company in London.
Liz Armas Egas (MSc student, 6 months, January 2020 - June 2020). Liz studied Genetic Plant Breeding in Valencia, Spain, and worked with Mariana Schuster on engineering immune proteases that are insensitive to pathogen-derived inhibitors.
Mansi Singh (MSc student, 6months, January 2020 - June 2020). Mansi studied Plant Science at Bonn University and worked with Pierre Buscaill on the role of flagellin glycans in the release of immunogenic peptides.
Judith Paulus (Postdoc, 60 months, July 2014 - June 2019). Judy studied in Dusseldorf, Germany and worked initially on method development to use ABPP to predict seed quality and later discovered the proteolytic cascade activating immune protease Rcr3 (PNAS 2020). She published several new concepts on guarding mechanisms (TiPS 2017; PLoS Pathol 2018) and proteolytic cascases (JXB 2019) and moved on to work for Lonza, a life science company in the UK.
Yoon Joo Lee (MSc Student, 6 months, January - June 2019). Yoon Joo is from South Korea and was working with Pierre Buscaill on flagellin recognition in plants as part of her MSc degree at Bonn University.
Maurice Konig (MSc student, 6 months, January - June 2019). Maurice is from Germany and was working on activity profiling GSTs with Maria Font Farre as part of his MSc degree at Bonn University.
Jiorgos Kourelis (PhD student and postdoc, 58 months, June 2014 - March 2019) Jiorgos is from Amsterdam, the Netherlands and did his D. Phil on the evolution and functional residues of the tomato immune protease / co-receptor Rcr3. He also wrote a monumental review summarising nine mechanistic classes of resistance genes (Plant Cell 2018) and reannoted the Nicotiana benthamiana proteome (BMC Genomics 2019). He also published the evolution of a guarded decoy (Nat. Comm 2020), and identified residues in Rcr3 responsible for inducing HR with Cf-2 and Avr2 (TPC 2024). He moved on to a postdoc position with Sophien Kamoun at The Sainsbury Laboratory and started his own laboratory at Imperial College London.
Ben Excell (MSc student, 6 months, September 2018 - February 2019) Ben is from the UK and was doing an internship from Wageningen (NL) while he was with us. He worked with Emma Thomas on the substrates for vacuolar processing enzymes.
Daniela Sueldo (Postdoc, 36 months, May 2015 - April 2018) Daniela is from Argentina and did her PhD in Wageningen (Joosten lab). She used activity-based proteomics to study the suppression of extracellular hydrolases during P. syringae infection. She moved on to a postdoc position in Warwick and is not a PI in Trondheim, Norway.
Oliver Matthews (MSc Biochemistry Oxford, 6 months, September 2017 - February 2018) Olley worked with Kyoko Morimoto on the validation of probes for aspartic proteases, metallo proteases and metacaspases.
Sonja Krauter (MSc Biology Hohenheim, 6 months, September 2017 - February 2018) Sonja is from Stuttgart, Germany and worked with Jiorgos Kourelis on Rcr3/Pip1 hybrids.
Friederike Grosse-Holz (PhD student, 38 months, November 2014 - December 2017) Friederike is from Germany and studied in Heidelberg, Munich and Freiburg. During her PhD she described the omics of agroinfiltrated N. benthamiana plants (PBJ 2017) and identified three protease inhibitors that boost recombinant protein levels (PBJ 2018). She also wrote a review on multifunctional inhibitors (New Phytologist. 2016), and moved on to a consultancy company in Germany.
Awais Zahid (MSc student from Hohenheim, 6 months, January-June 2017) Awais is from Pakistan and worked with Friederike Grosse-Holz on protease silencing and inhibitor expression to improve Molecular Farming. He moved on to a PhD position in Alnarp, Sweden.
Parvinder Kahlon (MSc student form Bonn, 6 months, July-December 2016) Parvinder is from India and worked with Jiorgos Kourelis on Rcr3/Pip1 hybrids and oxidative burst assays. He moved on to a PhD position at the TUM Munich.
Luisa Madeira (Postdoc, 31 months, October 2014 - April 2017) Luisa is from Brazil and established assays to study the degradation of recombinant proteins in agroinfiltrated plants and used chemical knock-out assays with protease inhibitors to study this process. The tools she developed were published with Grosse-Holz in PBJ 2018.
Balakumaran Chandrasekar (MSc and PhD student, February 2012 - March 2017) Bala is from South India and investigated the role of glycosidases of N. benthamiana in infections with P. syringae. He moved on as postdoc to Dusseldorf and Cologne and is now PI in India.
Daniel Krahn (Postdoc, 13 months, January 2015-January 2017) Daniel is from Hamm, Germany, and did his PhD with Prof. Markus Kaiser in Essen. He joined the lab as an in-group chemist developing novel activity-based probes, in collaboration with Prof. Chris Schofield at the Chemistry Department.
Felix Barbour (pre-undergraduate student, 3 months, September-December 2016) Felix used his gap year before starting in Cambridge University to gain extra experience in research. He was three months with and selected mutants of Nicotiana benthamiana generated by CRISPR/Cas9.
Ane Kjersti Vie (visiting postdoctoral researcher, 6 months, February-August 2016) Ane from the University of Trondheim, Norway and has investigated the targets of isothiocyanates that are produced naturally from glucosinolate breakdown in crucifers upon wounding.
Sophie Brouwer (MSc intern from Amsterdam, 8 months, November 2015- June 2016) Sophie is from Amsterdam, the Netherlands and did her MSc internship on investigating the Avr2 perception mechanism involving Rcr3 and Cf-2 of tomato. Sophie moved on to do her PhD on Molecular Phytopathology in Sweden.
Amjad Husaini (visiting Associate Professor, 12 months, May 2015 – May 2016) Amjad is from Kashmir, North India and has been investigating stress in rice and Saffron crocus using novel activity-based probes for glycosidases.
Judit Kovács (visiting PhD student, 7 months, August-December 2014; September-December 2015) Judit is from Hungary and is graduating at Szeged University on salt stress responses in tomato roots. She visited Oxford several times to study changing activity profiles of PLCPs and the proteasome. She moved on as a postdoc at the GMI in Vienna.
Thomas Roberts (visiting PI, 6 months, July-December 2015) Tom is from Sydney, Australia, working on various aspects of food chemistry and biotechnology, mostly on Sorghum. In Oxford he developed tools to study targets of serpins of Nicotiana benthamiana.
Tram Ngoc Hong (PhD student, 37 months, September 2011 - January 2015) Tram is from Vietnam and studied the manipulation of Ser hydrolases during infection with P. syringae.
Ana Bravo Cazar (MSc Internship Student, 3 months, October-December 2014) Ana is from Quito, Ecuador, and studied new approaches of substrate identification for apoplastic proteases.
Sabrina Ninck (Erasmus Internship Student, 3 months, October-December 2014) Sabrina is from Essen, Germany, and studied the role of Ser proteases and their inhibitors of N. benthamiana during infection with P. syringae using virus-induced gene silencing and transient over expression.
Samuel Cahil (DTC rotation student, 3 months, March-May 2014) Samuel is from Colchester, UK and evaluated novel isocoumarin-, lactone-, lactam- and cinnamic acid-based probes on plant proteomes.
Past team members in Cologne:
Joji Grace Villamor (Sernestrand) PhD student and postdoc (January 2011-December 2015) Joji is from the Philippines and studied labeling of plant proteomes by acyl-ATP probes (Mol. Cell. Proteomics 2013). She described specific labeling of hundreds of ATP binding proteins including dozends of protein kinases. This study also revelaed the oxidation of biotin, which facilitated the detection of labeled peptides, and a putative receptor shadding event of a specific group of receptor-like kinases. Joji coninued as a postdoc in the group of Dr. Pitter Heusgen at Researchcentre Juelich.
Johana Misas-Villamil PhD student and postdoc (89 months, May 2007-September 2014) Johana is from Bogota, Colombia and studied the role of the proteasome and vacuolar processing enzymes in various plant-pathogen interactions. Johana introduced new activity-based probes for the proteasome (Plant Physiol. 2011) and VPEs (Plant J. 2013). She also described wound entry by Pseudomonas syringae (Plant J. 2011), and discovered that some strains achieve this by producing proteasome inhibitor syringolin A (SylA, PLoS Pathog. 2013). Johana continued as senior postdoc with Prof. Doehlemann at the University of Cologne.
Asif Emons Kahn Intership student (5 months, August-November 2013) Asif has supported various research activities in the Plant Chemetics laboratory using his skills with bioinformatics. Asif analyzed the phylogeny of retaining glycosidases and receptor-like kinases, and generated various probe and inhibitor databases.
Aranka van den Burgh MSc Student (5 months, August-December 2013). Aranka is from Vlaardingen, the Netherlands and has validated novel subunit-specific probes for the proteasome, characterized proteasome inhibitors and tested their ability to promote distant colonization by Pseudomonas syringae. After her studies, Aranka started her PhD in the lab of Dr. Matthieu Joosten in Wageningen.
Matthias Berens MSc Student (6 Months, April-September 2013). Matthias is from Aachen, Germany, and has monitored proteins with GTP binding activities under supervision by Joji Villamor. After his MSc thesis, Matthias started his PhD as IMPRS student in the lab of Kenichi Tsuda at the MPIPZ.
Anja Hörger Visiting PhD student (several weeks in 2007-2010) and postdoc (9 months (May - December 2011), and 6 months (April-September 2013)). Anja studied evolutionary biology in Munich and did her PhD in Munich on natural varioation of tomato genes involved in immunity. She joined the Plant Chemetics lab, initially as visitor, later as postdoc, to test Rcr3 alleles for sensitivity for inhibition by various pathogen-derived inhibitors (PLoS Genetics 2012). Anja moved on to the University of Oxford as Marie Curie fellow for a postdoc position with Gail Preston and has been appointed as lecturer at Salzburg University, working on plant-pathogen coevolution.
Haibin Lu Postdoc (22 months; June 2011 - April 2013) Haibin is from China and has validated novel activity-based probes for AvrPphB (Chem. Biol. 2013), aleurains and cathepsin B. He moved on to a postdoc position with Dr. Marc Valls in Barcelona, Spain, and recently started his own research group as Associate Professor at the Northwest Agriculture & Forestry University in China.
Muhammad Ilyas PhD Student (58 months; April 2008 - January 2013). Ilyas is from Pakistan and did his DAAD-funded PhD research on the role of tomato proteases in immunity. Ilyas moved on to a postdoc position in the group of Dr. Bernd Reiss at the MPIPZ, and is currently postdoc with Prof. Grundler in Bonn.
Selva Kumari PhD Student (42 months; October 2008 - June 2012). Selva is from India and did her IMPRS-funded PhD on the structural biology of apoplastic proteases and thier pathogen-derived inhibitors. She moved on to Melbourne, Australia and found a postdoc position.
Gerald Bader (Gerry) MSc student (6 months, October 2011 - March 2012). Gerry studies Plant Sciences at the University of Bonn and did his thesis work on the development of fluorescent reporters for analysing inhibition of the plant proteasome during bacterial infection.
Oscar Goni Ramos Postdoc (12 months, February 2011-January 2012). Oscar is from Pamplona, Spain, and has generated data for a patent application for the agroindustry. He moved on to a postdoc position in Ireland.
Rohini Chawla Master student (18 months, July 2009 - June 2011). Rohini is from India and has cloned, expressed and purified several putative secreted effectors of Pseudomonas syringae and studied these with activity-based protein profiling.
Takayuki Shindo PhD student and postdoc (60 months, October 2005 - September 2011) Takayuki is from Tokyo, Japan and has studied the role of C14/RD21 in immunity (PLoSOne2012) and generated a library of pathogen-derived effectors to screen for inhibition of host proteins using high-throughput competitive ABPP assays (PLoS Pathogens 2016). Takayuki moved on to a posdoc position with Dr. Seth Davis (MPIPZ).
Ali Ahmed Internship student (5 months, April-August 2011) Ali is from Ethiopia and is finishing his MSc study at Wageningen University. He joined the Plant Chemetics lab to identify differential protein activities in tomato seedlings undergoing the hypersensitive response (Sueldo et al., New Phytologist 2014). Ali moved on to a PhD position in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Farnusch Kaschani Postdoc (64 months, Jan. 2006-April 2011) Farnusch is German/Iranian and has a background in organic chemistry. He established in vivo labeling using click-chemistry (TPJ2009), worked on Ser hydrolase profiling (MCP2009, MiPB2012; BMC2012), the EPIC-C14 interaction (Plant Physiol. 2012, Plant Sign. Behav. 2013) and established advanced proteomics and data analysis in the lab. Farnusch continued as lab manager in the Kaiser lab and manages his own protomics lab at Essen University.
Gerald Bader Internship student (2 months, Feb/March 2011) Gerald did his Masters in Plant Science at Bonn University and has worked on the Plant Chemetics lab on proteasome suppression during Pseudomonas syringae infection.
Christian Gu PhD student/Postdoc (54 months, October 2006-March 2011) Christian is from Beijing, China and established and applied activity-based profiling with novel probes on extracts from Arabidopsis leaves. He discovered a peptide ligase (NCB2008), introduced proteasome activity profiling (TPJ2009), studied RD21 (PLoSOne2012) and GST labeling by DS9 (ChemBiol2013). Christian found a permanent position in plant research in a new research institute in Beijng and later moved on as senior lab manager at the Chineese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Izabella Kolodziejek Postdoc (35 months, Feb. 2008-Dec 2010)
Izabella is from Poland and is specialized on plant cell biology. Her cell biology studies in the Plant Chemetics lab included the localization of fluorescent probes, proteins and bacteria (Plant Physiol., 2011). She moved on to a permanent lecturer/research position at the University of Warshaw and later to a biotech company in Poland.
Kerstin Richau Postdoc (36 months, Jan. 2008-Dec 2010)
Kerstin is from Germany and did her PhD in Amsterdam. She worked on the biochemical subclassification of Arabidopsis papain-like cysteine proteases (Plant Physiol. 2012), and has moved on to a postdoc position at the MPIPZ and then later to Umea.
Bikram Pandey Master Student (3 + 10 months, July 2009-Dec. 2010)
Bikram is from Nepal and is studying Molecular Biotechnology at Bonn University. He investigated the inhibition of plant serine hydrolases by agrochemicals using competitive ABPP. He moved to Vienna to do his PhD.
Adriana Pruzinska Postdoc (Feb.2009-Nov.2010)
Adriana is from Slowakija and is interested in leaf senescence. She used ABPP to study senescence-associated proteolytic activities. Adriana continued her research on leaf senescence in Perth, Australia.
Gerrit Toenges Internship Student (3 months, Nov.-Dec. 2009)
Gerrit is from Germany and studied the role of Arabidopsis vacuolar processing enzymes during infection with Hyaloperonospora parasitica.
Zheming Wang PhD student (46 months, Dec.2005-Sept.2009)
Zheming is from Hangzhou, China, and designed and synthesized novel activity-based probes. One of these probes was ligated to N-termini by a papain-like peptide ligase (Nat. Chem. Biol. 2008) As organic chemist, Zheming worked at the CGC under supervision of Dr. Markus Kaiser. Zheming moved on to a post-doc position in Lausanne, Switzerland, and started his own company in China for the synthesis of small chemicals (BSAZ).
Leonard Both Diploma student (3+12 months, Aug.2007-Aug.2009)
Leo studied at Cologne University and investigated the role of Arabidopsis and Nicotiana cystatins in PLCP and VPE regulation. Leo moved on to do his PhD in London with Julian Ma.
Jaap Wolters Masters student (6 months, Jan.2009-Juni 2009)
Jaap studied at Wageningen University and investigated the regulation of papain-like cysteine protease RD21 by protein diisomerase PDI5 using biochemical assays. He moved on to do his PhD in Italy.
Remco Stam Master student (6 months)
Remco studied at Wageningen University and investigated the molecular basis of natural variation of protease activity profiles in Arabidopsis, using activity-based profiling, segregation analysis and agroinfiltration. Remco moved on to do his PhD in Scotland with Edgar Huitema, and is currently a Humboldt postdoc with Prof. Tellier at the TUM in Munich.
Shabab Mohammed PhD student (12 months, March 2007-Feb.2008)
Shabab was a visiting PhD student from India. He worked on tomato papain-like cysteine proteases and their inhibition by pathogen-derived inhibitors (Plant Cell 2008). Shabab also performed targeted mutagenesis on proteases and investigated their effect on accumulation, activity, and subcellular localisation. Shabab went back to Pune, India to finish his PhD, moved to the Max Planck Institue for Chemcal Biology in Jena, Germany with a Humboldt fellowship, and then to the MIT in the USA with an HFSP fellowship.
Raju Chintha Masters student (6 months, Aug.2007-Feb.2008)
Raju is from South India and an organic chemist studying bioinformatics at Bonn University. As a masters student he used bioinformatics and activity-based profiling to fuctionally and biochemically subclassify plant papain-like cysteine proteases.
Twinkal Pansuriya Masters Student (6 months)
Twinkal is from India and studied in Sweden. As a masters student she cloned dozens of papain-like cysteine proteases into binary vectors and expressed them by agroinfiltration to study their biochemical properties using activity-based profiling. Meanwhile Twinkal completed her PhD at Leiden University (The Netherlands).
Yingxi Wang Master student (6 weeks)
Yingxi Wang studied chemistry at Siegen University. He joined the group for five weeks and optimized parameters for click-chemistry.
Dr. Monika Kalde Postdoctoral fellow (6 months, May 2006-Sept.2006)
Monika Kalde is from Germany and has been investigating the translocation of papain-like cysteine proteases during Pseudomonas infection. Monika moved on to Marseille (France) and later Oxford (UK) and back to Germany.