Associate ProfessorMarcus Heisler

Project Opportunities

Title: The role of transcription factors and intercellular signals in specifying flower structure

Summary of opportunity:

This project will use molecular genetics and confocal-based imaging to investigate genes and signals involved in specifying the underlying structure of flowers.

Opportunity synopsis:

Flowers are one of the most striking of biological structures and central to the reproduction of many crop plants. How is their basic "ground plan" of the flower patterned?

This project will investigate the role of transcription factors and intercellular signals in regulating the number and position of floral organs within developing flowers. It will utilise gene and protein targeted knockout, molecular genetics as well as confocal-based imaging to understand and re-engineer events at the cellular level.

The project contributes to a larger collaborative effort between USyd and three European labs, funded by a European Research Council Grant. Please see here for more details: https://www2.hu-berlin.de/resyde/