Plant Science

Biography

Biography: Gunnar Wingsle

Abstract

Wood development is of outstanding interest for both the basic research and industry due to the associated cellulose and lignin biomass production. Efforts to elucidate wood formation (which is essential for numerous aspects of both pure and applied plant science) have mostly been made using different -omic analyses from low resolution samples. In our studies we analyzed the global protein expression in different cell types originating from phloem, cambium and xylem in wood from Populus. However, we have also to a minor degree; used spruce has a model system. These cell types represent distinct developmental stages and, therefore, could help to explain cellular mechanisms of developmental processes such as xylogenesis and the phenomenon of wood formation. To additionally add information of wood related developmental questions we have applied different stress conditions as gravitational stress, resulting in tension wood, and oxidative stress caused by antisense-transgenic plants of an isoform of superoxide dismutase (hiPI-SOD). Data from multiple platforms including transcriptomics (microarray analysis), proteomics (UPLC/QTOF-MS), and metabolomics (GC-TOF/MS, UPLC/MS, and UHPLC-LTQ/MS) were integrated using recent development of orthogonal projections to latent structures called OnPLS. Furthermore, global and targeted proteomic studies have been done of whole cell extracts and subcellular fractions to give a more specific and sensitive analysis of wood development proteins, such as cellulose synthase proteins (CES).