Meet The Hydrosensing Team

Luis Alonso Baez is a researcher of plant molecular and cell biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who investigates mechanical aspects of development and stress responses to understand plant growth and adaptation.

During his PhD, he studied how stem cells in Arabidopsis thaliana roots respond to abiotic stress, employing genetic, molecular and physiological approaches. He implemented a microfluidics platform to perform live-imaging confocal microscopy, enabling real-time tracking of root and cellular responses under different treatments.

As a postdoc and researcher, he has focused on developing advanced imaging tools to study plants in vivo (JXB, 2023). With a multidisciplinary background in physics, engineering and biology, he played a key role in establishing Scandinavia’s first Brillouin microscopy setup. Currently, this system is being intensively used to map the mechanical properties of plant roots at the tissue and cellular levels, with ongoing collaborations aimed at expanding its applications to other plant organs and organisms.

Sara Morghen is a PhD student at NTNU. She obtained her master’s degree in molecular biology at the University of Padua, Italy, where she focused on calcium signaling and salt stress responses in Arabidopsis for her thesis. Sara’s experience includes plant phenotyping, the use of bioluminescent and fluorescent calcium indicators, and confocal imaging. Sara will contribute to the identification of molecular components of the water sensing machinery in plants and exploit novel biosensors for the characterization of these molecular components. Furthermore, she will also apply Brillouin microscopy to determine the role of cell and tissue mechanical characteristics in the process of water sensing.

Francesco Saffioti, a PhD student at NTNU, recently completed his master’s degree in molecular biology. He has experience with plant phenotyping, confocal live imaging, and molecular techniques. Francesco will contribute to this project by identifying and functionally characterizing the molecular components involved in plant water sensing mechanisms. Additionally, with Brillouin microscopy he will investigate how changes in cell wall mechanical properties play a role in this process.

Michaela Tichá is a researcher in Thorsten Hamann's Functional Plant Biology Group at NTNU. Her work focuses on understanding how plants perceive and respond to environmental stresses, with a particular emphasis on the mechanisms that maintain cell wall integrity. Leveraging her expertise in advanced imaging techniques, plant molecular biology and biochemistry, Michaela investigates how molecular signaling, biomechanics and metabolic changes can provide novel insights and strategies to enhance plant resilience. With extensive experience in microscopy-based approaches, Michaela has utilized a wide range of imaging platforms to study plant stress responses at subcellular, cellular, tissue, and organ levels. As part of the ERC project, she is responsible for applying existing biosensors and developing new ones to quantitatively assess plant responses to water stress, while also exploring the underlying molecular mechanisms involved. Additionally, Michaela participates in the utilization of Brillouin confocal microscopy, an innovative technique that generates high-resolution stiffness and viscosity maps of living cells under stress, providing critical data for understanding plant biomechanics in response to environmental challenges.

Barak Bitman is a master's student in Eilon Shani's lab at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on identifying ABA efflux transporters involved in xerobranching to uncover how ABA movement regulates root development under water-limited conditions. By combining multi-targeted CRISPR library screens with genome-wide association studies (GWAS), he investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying lateral root formation in water-deficient environments. His work advances our understanding of plant hydrosensing and adaptive root responses to water availability.

Daria Gur is a PhD student in Eilon Shani's lab at Tel Aviv University, funded by the ERC. Her research focuses on developing CRISPR activation libraries in Arabidopsis thaliana to investigate gene function through gain-of-function phenotypes. By leveraging these libraries, she aims to uncover novel traits involved in water stress sensing. Her work seeks to identify key regulators of root-environment interactions and establish CRISPR activation as a powerful tool for functional genomics research.

Amichai Berman is a PhD student in the Shani Lab at Tel Aviv University, funded by the ERC.
His research focuses on developing advanced CRISPR libraries to overcome functional
redundancy in plant genomes. By applying these libraries in Arabidopsis thaliana, he aims to
characterize the genetic and molecular functions of potential hydrosensing genes. His work
integrates genome-wide screening approaches with targeted functional studies to uncover key
regulators of plant water sensing.

Moran Anfang is a PhD student in Eilon Shani's lab at Tel Aviv University, specializing in ABA delivery mechanisms and their role in plant development. Her research focuses on understanding where ABA is located, how it moves, and how it is transported under normal conditions and during water stress. As part of the ERC-Synergy project, Moran is working to identify key transporters involved in these processes and uncover the broader mechanisms controlling ABA synthesis and distribution. To facilitate this effort, she is developing improved CRISPR libraries for large-scale multi-targeted screens to reveal transporters involved in the xerobranching process. By showing how ABA movement shapes plant responses, her work is expected to reveal the mechanisms behind the plant's response to water stress.

Kevin is PI of the Hydrophotonics Research Laboratory in the Optics and Photonics Research Group, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. His team bring to the ERC Synergy their novel fast water imaging methods - hydrodynamic Raman microspectroscopy (“HydRa”) which can non-invasively image water within living plant tissues at the optical diffraction limit with sub-second, subcellular precision”.

Leah Band is a Professor of Mathematical Biology who focusses on developing models to understand plant development. She brings expertise in a wide range of modelling techniques, including cell-based modelling, asymptotic analysis, biomechanics, fluid dynamics, and parameter inference. Of particular relevance to this project is her development of cell-based models to understand how the localization and properties of membrane transporters and metabolism enzymes affect plant hormone distributions, which has led to high-profile papers in Science, Nature Plants, PNAS and The Plant Cell. She has also developed tissue-level models of water transport during lateral root emergence (Nat Cell Biol, 2012) and models to understand how phloem properties affect long-distance sugar and hormone transport (J Theor Biol, 2023).

Anthony Bishopp is a developmental biologist with expertise in vascular tissues and hormone signalling. Specifically this has involved understanding factors shaping both spatial and temporal patterns of auxin and cytokinin response at the root tip. This work has involved developing new reporter systems as well as imaging these with confocal and light sheet microscopy.

Danielle Colyer is a PhD student funded by the ERC Hydrosensing project and is based at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on specific molecular targets in the Hydrosensing project, characterising their molecular functions in water stress sensing in Arabidopsis. Danielle is also working alongside Christine and the team from Regensburg to structurally determine the functions of these key targets. As a result, she will be working closely in both teams to bridge the work between the water stress genetic screens and the structural biology.

My name is Roshan Kumar, and I am currently working as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with Professor Malcolm Bennett at the School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, UK. My research is primarily associated with the HYDROSENSING project. I aim to investigate how plant roots sense water, their adaptive responses under varying water regimes, and the underlying physiological and molecular mechanisms. This research holds significant implications for improving crop resilience, water-use efficiency, and agricultural sustainability, particularly in the face of climate change and increasing water scarcity.

Poonam is a BBSRC Discovery Fellow at University of Nottingham. Her research focusses on studying root branching adaptations in response to heterogenous soil moisture conditions. She is specifically interested in uncovering molecular mechanisms behind the water-driven root adaptive response termed ‘Xero-branching’ (Mehra et al., 2022, Science). Xero-branching is characterized by complete suppression of root branching in an area of low water availability in soil (e.g. air-filled gap). Her goal is to discover the role of mechanosensing and ABA transport in regulating Xero-branching. As a part of the ERC synergy project, Poonam will support the screening of CRISPR libraries and imaging novel water sensors during xerobranching conditions.

My core research interest is the development of tools and technologies for label-free imaging of biological constructs. I operate at the interface between Engineering and Life Sciences and my efforts are focused on the design and development of Raman-based imaging methods at the University of Nottingham as a label-free imaging platform at both micro-scale (imaging plant cells) and macro-scale (imaging plant tissues); With over 15 years experience in developing innovative non-invasive Raman based imaging techniques my imaging tools will be employed to generate hydraulic and hydrosignalling maps for root (and later shoot) tissues, whilst providing guidance and feedback on the sample preparation for students and staff engaged in the project across the four host institutions.

Katja Urbansky is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Christine Ziegler at the University of Regensburg, with expertise in structural biology and protein biochemistry. As part of the ERC-Synergy Hydrosensing project, she focuses on the biochemical and structural characterization of hydro-genes identified by the ERC partners. Her work includes construct design, protein purification, functional analysis, and structural modelling, contributing to a deeper understanding of how these proteins mediate plant responses to water stress. She has a particular interest in the relationship between protein structure and function and uses structural data - both experimentally determined and predicted - to propose targeted mutations to ERC partners, aiming to reveal how specific changes affect protein function and lead to distinct phenotypes.

Jan is a dedicated Ph.D. student with a background in chemistry and physics, who shifted his focus to Biophysics under the guidance of Christine Ziegler. A passion for molecular and cellular biology led Jan to explore the intricacies of cloning, construct design, and working with living cells. His enthusiasm for cutting-edge technologies in microscopy, such as STED, drove him to venture into the world of fluorescence super-resolution microscopy. His previous work has revolved around studying dynamin-like proteins involved in fusion and fission processes. Jan's current research interests lie in investigating morphology changes in cells exposed to environmental stress.

During his PhD, he studied human ion channels and secondary transporters as well as a bacterial light-driven proton-pump. During this time, he became enthusiastic about expression and purification of difficult membrane protein targets for structural studies. He could gain lots of expertise in different protein expression systems, cell culture techniques, membrane protein purification and reconstitution in native membrane mimics.

As a PostDoc he is transferring and expanding this knowledge, to promote the Hydrosensing project with structural and functional of data of plant proteins involved in water stress.

Tamara (Tami) Specht is a PhD student under the supervision of Christine Ziegler at the Biophysics II department of the University of Regensburg. She recently started her PhD after completing her Master thesis at the same department. Her research focuses on the structural and functional characterization of membrane proteins especially of Ca2+ permeable Two-pore-channels using cryo-electron microscopy. One of the main aspects of her work is investigating calcium signaling through specific proteins in plants.

M. Gregor Madej is a senior research associate in Regensburg with a focus on biochemistry and biophysics. With over 20 years of experience in structural biology, his research focuses on elucidating the enzymology of proteins through integrative computational and experimental methods. He has a deep understanding of protein structures and their dynamic functions. By utilizing structural insights derived from cryo-EM in combination with advanced insilico experiments, he aims to unravel the functional mechanisms and regulation of enzymes. His expertise extends to the analysis of complex structural and functional data that enable detailed investigation of enzyme activity and control. His work aims to bridge the gap between static structural data and the dynamic biological processes controlled by these vital molecular machines. As part of the hydrosensing network, Greg provides important advice on sample preparation for structural analysis and offers expert support in data interpretation.

Benedikt Mayer is a Postdoctoral researcher in Structural Biology, who structurally investigates specific molecular targets involved in water stress sensing via single particle analysis cryo electron microscopy.

During his PhD, he studied human ion channels and secondary transporters as well as a bacterial light-driven proton-pump. During this time, he became enthusiastic about expression and purification of difficult membrane protein targets for structural studies. He could gain lots of expertise in different protein expression systems, cell culture techniques, membrane protein purification and reconstitution in native membrane mimics.

As a PostDoc he is transferring and expanding this knowledge, to promote the Hydrosensing project with structural and functional of data of plant proteins involved in water stress.

Timo Hermann is a PhD student in the Department of Biophysics II at the University of Regensburg, where he is a member of the Cryo-EM research team led by Christine Ziegler. His research focuses on structural biology, with a particular emphasis on elucidating the mechanisms of plant membrane proteins. Using Cryo-EM, Timo aims to uncover the functional mechanisms of mechanosensitive channels of small-conductance (MscS)-like family in plant cells.