Current group members
Michael Hothorn, principal investigator, e-mail
Michael studied Biology (Biochemistry/Biophysics) at the University of Heidelberg, Germany (1998-2002) supported by the German National Academic Foundation. He did his PhD in structural biology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory sponsored by the Peter and Traudl Engelhorn Foundation (2002-2006). Michael then did his postdoc with Joanne Chory at the Salk Institute, with support from EMBO and HFSP (2007-2011). He set up his first independent research group at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen, Germany (2012-2014). In 2014 he became associate professor at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Geneva. Michael received an HFSP career development award and the ERC starting grant in 2012, and became an EMBO young investigator in 2015. In 2017, Michael received the HHMI International Research Scholar Award and the ERC consolidator grant in 2018. He was promoted to full professor in 2019.
Larissa Broger, research assistant & lab manager, e-mail
Larissa obtained a BA in Botany/Zoology from the University of Toronto, Canada (1995-1999). She then worked as a biotechnology assistant at Agro Canada from 1999-2000. From 2001-2004 she was a technical assistant in Cris Kuhlemeier’s lab at the University of Bern, and from 2004-2013 she worked in Jurek Paszkowski’s lab at the University of Geneva. She joined the lab in summer 2014.
Alberto Caregnato, PhD student e-mail
Alberto obtained his BSc in Biomolecular Science and Technology at the University of Trento and his MSc in Industrial and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Bologna (2013-2019). He worked as Research Assistant at the University of Copenhagen, and then at the University of Padova (2019-2021). He started his PhD in our lab in July 2021.
Elena Cavallini, PhD student e-mail
Elena obtained her BSc in Biotechnology at the University of Torino (2017-2020) and MSc in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Pisa and Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (2020-2022). She did a thesis internship at the University of Oxford before joining our group in November 2022.
Houming Chen, postdoctoral fellow e-mail
Houming obtained a BA from Nanjing Forestry University (2011-2015) and a master degree in plant molecular biology at the College of Life Sciences at Zhejiang University (2015-2018). He did his PhD in the lab of Martin Bayer, then at the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tuebingen, Germany (2018-2022). Houming joined the lab in January 2023.
Joel Nicolet, research assistant & lab manager, e-mail
Joel studied Biology at the University of Geneva and then worked for a couple of years in a biotech company. He then moved to Malawi, working on a HIV/tubercolosis project for an international NGO. From 2006 to 2013 he was a research assistant in Jurek Paszkowski’s lab at the University of Geneva. He joined our lab in summer 2014.
Maria Palomero-Gomez, PhD student, e-mail
Maria did her BSc in Biotechnology Graduate at the University of Zaragoza, her bachelor thesis in our lab within the Swiss-European Mobility Program (SEMP) and a practical stay at the University of Oxford. She is did her master as part of the Erasmus Mundus Master Program in Plant Breeding emPLANT+ (coordinated by UniLaSalle), at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and at the University of Geneva, where she is did her master thesis in our lab from February to July 2024. From September 2024 Maria is a PhD student in our group.
Oded Pri-Tal, postdoctoral fellow, e-mail
Oded completed his BA in Plant Science at the Faculty of Agriculture of Hebrew University Jerusalem (2011-2014). He obtained a master and PhD degree from the same university, studying the perception of the hormone abscisc acid in plant in the group of Assaf Mosquna (2015-2020). Oded joined our lab in Geneva in May 2021.
Pierre Raia, postdoctoral fellow, e-mail
Pierre studied molecular biology and biochemistry (2010-2014) and did his PhD in structural biology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris (2015-2019), working on archael DNA polymerase D. From 2019-2022 he did a postdoc with Andreas Boland at the University of Geneva working on genome segregation during mitosis. He joined our group in May 2022.
Philippe Rieu, postdoctoral fellow, e-mail
Philippe studied biotechnology at Agro Paris Tech, followed by a master in plant biology at University Paris Saclay. From 2019-2023 he did his PhD in the lab of Francois Parcy in Grenoble, where he worked on the interaction of plant transcription factors with F-box proteins in flower development. He joined our lab in May 2023.
Felix Rico Resendiz, postdoctoral fellow, e-mail
Félix studied Biotechnology at the Autonomous University of Queretaro (2008-2014). He obtained a master (2014-2016) and PhD degree (2016-2021) in plant biotechnology under the direction of Alfredo Cruz-Ramirez at CINVESTAV Irapuato, Mexico. Félix joined the lab in July 2021.
Kristina Sturm, PhD student, e-mail
Kristina obtained a bachelor degree from the University of Muenster (2014-2017), followed by a master in biochemistry from the University of Tuebingen (2017-2020). She did her master thesis in the lab of John Weir at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen. She joined our lab in May 2020.
Lab alumni
Harshul Arora-Veraszto, postdoctoral fellow (2019-2022)
Harshul obtained her bachelors in Biochemistry from the University of Delhi (2007-2010) and a masters in Biochemical Technology from the Madurai Kamaraj University (2010-2012). She did her PhD in the Department of Protein Evolution in the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology , Tuebingen, on multifunctional enzymes in the shikimate pathway (December 2013 – June 2018), followed by a short postdoc in the same lab from July 2018- February 2019. She joined our lab in July 2019, where she worked on biochemical aspects of plant light signal transduction (Paulisic, Qin, Arora Veraszto et al., EMBO J, 2021).
Daniel Bojar, undergraduate researcher (2012-2014)
Daniel joined us as a second year undergraduate, while doing his BA in biochemistry at Tuebingen University. Spending all his spare time in the lab, the ‘kid’ solved the crystal structure of the BRI1 kinase domain and uncovered its activation mechanism (Bojar et al., Plant J, 2014). Since 2013, Daniel is a fellow of German National Academic Foundation. He went on to do his master degree at the ETH Zurich., and obtained his PhD from the same institution in 2019. He is now assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg.
Benjamin Brandt, postdoctoral fellow (2014-2018)
Ben studied biology at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany (2003-2009). He then moved to San Diego and did his PhD in Julian Schroeder’s lab at UCSD, working on abscisic acid signalling (2009-2014). He was a postdoctoral fellow in our lab in Geneva from October 2014 to October 2018. From 2015-2017, Ben was supported by an EMBO long-term fellowship. In his postdoc Ben analyzed the receptor activation mechanism of different peptide-sensing membrane receptor kinases in plants (Santiago, Brandt et. al., eLife, 2016; Brandt & Hothorn, Curr Biol, 2016; Hazak, Brandt et al., EMBO Rep 2017; Anne, Amiguet-Vercher, Brandt et al., Development 2018, Okuda et al., PNAS, 2020). He also determined the structure of cysteine-rich receptor kinases (CRKs; Vaattovaara A, Brandt B et al., Comms Biol, 2019). Until 2020, Ben was a staff scientist in the group of Cyril Zipfel at the University of Zurich. Ben is now permanent staff at the LMU Munich.
Daniel Couto, postdoctoral fellow (2017-2021)
Daniel studied Biology at Minho University, Portugal (2006-2011), where he also obtained his masters degree in Herlânder Azevedo’s lab. He then moved to Norwich, UK to pursue his PhD in plant immune signaling with Cyril Zipfel at The Sainsbury Laboratory (2012-2016). In his postdoc Daniel identified putative PP-InsP interaction proteins in plants (Lorenzo-Orts, Couto & Hothorn, New Phytol, 2020; Couto et al., Biochemistry, 2021, Laurent et al., Plos Genetics, 2024). Daniel joined Creoptix in May 2021 and currently works at CSL Behring.
Mara Guariento, postdoctoral fellow (2013-2014)
Mara joined us as a postdoctoral fellow from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. In the lab, she pioneered the expression, purification and crystallisation of two plant receptor kinases. Upon moving the lab to Geneva in summer 2014, Mara joined the laboratory of our colleague Fulvia Bono at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen. She now works as a technical staff scientist at the University of Ulm, Germany.
Christine Henzler, research assistant & lab manager (2012-2014)
Christine joined the lab in Tuebingen as a technical assistant in 2012. She did an amazing job setting up and running the lab as well as our insect cell culture facility. Notably, Christine optimized the expression of several difficult target proteins (Santiago, Henzler & Hothorn, Science, 2013). She also carried out numerous genetic experiments in Arabidopsis and made the lab a fun place to work. Christine then worked for our colleagues Remco Sprangers and Silke Wiesner at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen. Currently, she is a lab technician in Hassan Salem’s group in Tuebingen.
Ulrich Hohmann, PhD student (2013-2018)
Ulrich studied Biology at the Technical University Munich in Germany and completed his master thesis in Erwin Grill’s laboratory at the same university (2008-2012). In 2013 he started as a PhD student in our group at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen, Germany and defended his PhD in summer 2018 at the University of Geneva (with distinction). In his thesis Ulrich analyzed the activation mechanism of plant membrane receptor kinases (Hohmann et al., Annual Reviews, 2017) with leucine-rich repeat ectodomains (Santiago et al., eLife, 2016; Hohmann et al., PNAS, 2018, Hohmann & Hothorn, Acta Cryst D, 2019) and described a family of negative regulators in the brassinosteroid signaling pathway (Hohmann et al., Nature Plants, 2018, Hohmann et al., Plant Cell, 2020, Obergfell, Hohmann et al., PCP, 2024). He was deeply involved in setting up grating-coupled interferometry in our lab (Lorenzo-Orts et al., LSA, 2019, Okuda et al., PNAS, 2020, Parys et al., Cell Host Microbe, 2021). He received the Arditi Prize for his PhD thesis in 2019. Ulrich is now a postdoctoral fellow in the labs of Julius Brennecke at the IMBA and Clemens Plaschka at the IMP, Vienna, Austria.
Florian Laurent, master & PhD student (2019-2024)
Florian completed his BSc in Biology at the University of Burgundy, Dijon (France), with a major in biochemistry and molecular biology in 2017. He joined the lab for his master thesis in January 2019 and obtained his master degree in June 2019. From September 2019 to August 2024 Florian did his PhD thesis on inositol pyrophosphate catabolism in Arabidopsis and Marchantia in our lab (Laurent et al., Plos Genetics, 2024).
Henno Marti, master student (2023-2024)
Henno did his bachelor and master studies in Biology at the University of Geneva and did his master thesis on a new inositol pyrophosphate signaling component from September 2023 to August 2024.
Andrea Moretti, postdoctoral fellow (2017-2022)
Andrea obtained a bachelor in biotechnology from the University of Bologna and a master in agro-industrial biotechnology from the University of Ferrara (2008-2012). He did his master thesis on anthocyanins biosynthesis in Beekwilder’s lab in Wageningen. He then joined the Rizzi’s group at the University of Piemonte Orientale and did there his PhD in biochemistry and structural biology (2012-2016). In our lab Andrea worked on different aspects of receptor kinase signaling (Okuda, Fujita, Moretti et al., PNAS, 2020) with an emphasis on brassinosteroid signaling (Hohmann, Nicolet, Moretti et al., Nat Plants, 2018; Obergfell, Hohmann, Moretti et al., PCP, 2024). Andrea joined Creoptix in July 2022.
Kelvin Lau, postdoctoral fellow (2015-2018)
Kelvin studied Biochemistry at the University of Waterloo, Canada (2003-2008). He then did his PhD in Filip Van Petegem’s laboratory University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2008-2015). There he worked on calcium signaling. He joined our lab in April 2015 supported by an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship. During his postdoc, Kelvin dissected how plant photoreceptors compete with light signaling transcription factors for binding to the ubiquitin ligase COP1 (Lau et al., EMBO J, 2019; Podolec, Lau et al., PNAS, 2021). Kelvin also contributed to the biochemical analysis of the inositol pyrophosphate kinases/phosphatases VIH1 and VIH2 in plants (Zhu, Lau et al., eLife, 2019) and to a review on plant membrane receptor kinases (Hohmann, Lau & Hothorn, Annual Reviews, 2017). In November 2018, Kelvin became a staff member of the Protein production and structure core facility at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Kitaik Lee, postdoctoral fellow (2019-2022)
Kitaik obtained a bachelor in biotechnology (2004-2011) and the master & PhD in structural biology (X-ray crystallography) from Korea University (2011-2019), working on thiol-oxidoreductases. Kitaik worked on inositol pyrophosphate metabolism in our group. Kitaik is presently a postdoctoral researcher at NIH.
Laura Lorenzo, PhD student (2015-2019)
Laura studied Biology at the University of Valencia (2007-2012) and did her master thesis in Jaime F. Martinez-Garcia’s laboratory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). From 2015-2019 Laura did her PhD in our lab, working on inorganic polyphosphates in plants (Lorenzo-Orts, 2019). During her PhD Laura uncovered that the inorganic polyphosphatase TTM3 and the cell cycle regulator CDEC26 are transcribed and translated together from a bicistronic transcript (Lorenzo-Orts et al., Nature Plants, 2019). Laura also identified CHAD domains as inorganic polyphosphate binding modules (Lorenzo-Orts et al., Life Science Alliance, 2019, Zhu et al., Plant J, 2019) and wrote a Tansley Review on inorganic and inositol polyphosphates in plants (Lorenzo-Orts, Couto & Hothorn, New Phytologist, 2019). Laura is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Andrea Pauli at the IMP in Vienna.
Jacobo Martinez-Font, postdoctoral fellow (2012-2017)
Jacobo joined our lab as an ERC-funded postdoctoral fellow at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen, Germany in 2012 and moved with us to Geneva in 2014. During his postdoc, Jacobo dissected the catalytic mechanism of triphosphate-tunnel metalloenzymes (Martinez, Truffault, Hothorn, JBC, 2015; Pesquera et al., JBC, 2022). He also contributed his expertise in structural biochemistry to many projects in the lab, assisting different lab members with their experiments and projects (Bojar, Martinez et al., Plant J, 2014; Lorenzo et al., Nature Plants, 2019). He is now a research specialist at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in Neuchatel.
Elsa Obergfell, master student (2016-2018)
Elsa studied Biology at the University of Geneva (2013-2016). She then started her master in Molecular Plant Science, and did her master thesis in our lab between 2016-2018 on the regulation of brassinosteroid signaling by 14-3-3 proteins (Obergfell et al., PCP, 2024), for which she was awarded a thesis price by the Fondation Arditi. She is now a PhD student at the Biozentrum Basel.
Satohiro Okuda, postdoctoral fellow (2015 – 2020)
Satohiro studied biology at the Nagoya University, Japan (2004-2008). He did his master thesis and his PhD in Tetsuya Higashiyama’s lab at the same university (2008-2013) sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2010-2013). He continued his work on pollen tube guidance with support by JSPS (2013-2015). He joined our lab in June 2015, supported by an HFSP postdoctoral fellowship. Satohiro dissected the function of the LRR-RKs GSO1 and GSO2 in seed development and Casparian strip formation (Okuda et al., PNAS, 2020; Doll et al., Science, 2020), in peptide signaling (Crook et al., PNAS, 2021; Steinbrenner et al., PNAS, 2020) studied the architecture and function of CRINKLY receptor kinases (Okuda et al., bioRxiv, 2020). He is now assistant professor at the University of Tokyo.
Aleksandra Placzek, researcher (2013-2014)
Aleksandra joined our lab in Tuebingen after completing her MA in biotechnology at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. She worked on our ERC-funded project, dissecting polyphosphate metabolism in plants. Using plant molecular biology, genetics and cell biology, Aleksandra helped to functionally characterise a novel enzyme mutant in Arabidopsis (Lorenzo-Orts et al., Nature Plants, 2019). In 2014 she joined the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany. Since 2018 she works in the Valenzano lab at the Max Planck Institute for Ageing.
Martina Ried, postdoctoral fellow, (2017-2019)
Martina studied Biology at the University of Munich, Germany (2006 – 2011) and did her PhD in Martin Parniskes’s lab at the same university as fast-track student supported by the Graduete Schoole Life Science Munich (2011 – 2014). There, she analyzed the interplay and signalling role of different receptor kinases implicated in symbiotic and immune responses between plants and bacteria, fungi or oomycetes. She joined our lab in Geneva in March 2017 and was supported by an EMBO long-term fellowship from 2017-2019. In our lab, Martina dissected how inositiol pyrophosphates and their SPX receptor regulate the phosphate starvation response transcription factor PHR1 (Ried, Wild et al., Nature Comms, 2021; Jung et al., COIB, 2018). Martina is now a reseach group leader at the Leibniz Institute for Plant Biochemistry in Halle, Germany.
Julia Santiago, postdoctoral fellow (2012-2016)
Julia studied agriculture engineering at the UPV in Valencia, Spain. She did her PhD at the IBMCP Valencia and at the EMBL in Grenoble, France, working on abscisic acid signaling (2007-2011). In 2012, Julia joined our group at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen (Germany) with a FEBS postdoctoral fellowship. She completed her postdoctoral training supported by an EMBO fellowship with us at the University of Geneva. During her postdoc she discovered that SERK co-receptor kinases are essential components of brassinosteroid (Santiago, Henzler & Hothorn, Science, 2013; Bojar et al., Plant J, 2014) and peptide signaling pathways (Santiago et. al., eLife, 2016; Hazak et al., EMBO Rep, 2017; Hohmann, Santiago et al., PNAS, 2018) in plants. In 2016, she became a tenure-track assistant professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and a tenured associated professor in 2021.
Julie Savarin, postdoctoral fellow (2019-2022)
Julie studied Plant Biology at the University of Paris 11 – Orsay. She did her PhD at the ENS Lyon, France working in the on the translational regulation of a plant cell cycle regulator (2014-2018). Julie joined our lab in 2019, where she worked on inositol pyrophosphate signaling pathways in Arabidopsis (Guan et al., Nat Commun, 2022).
Rebekka Wild, master & PhD student (2012-2016)
Rebekka studied Biochemistry at Tuebingen University (2008-2013). She worked in Gerald Muench’s lab at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, before joining our lab as a undergraduate researcher in summer 2012. After completing the first master thesis in the group, she obtained a PhD student fellowship by the International Max Planck Research School. During her PhD in Tuebingen and at the University of Geneva, Rebekka discovered that SPX domains are cellular sensors for inositol pyrophosphate signaling molecules and that inositol pyrophosphates control phosphate homeostasis in higher organisms (Wild et al., Science, 2016; Wild et al., Protein Science, 2016, Ried, Wild et al., Nature Comms, 2021). After defending her PhD thesis in Geneva in September 2016, she became a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Kaspar Locher at the ETH in Zürich. She was awarded the Prix Schlaefli for her PhD thesis in 2019. She is now a permanent staff scientist and group leader at the Institut Biologie Structurale in Grenoble. France.
Janika Witthoeft, postdoctoral fellow (2012-2014)
Janika studied Biology in Freiburg and Tuebingen, Germany and did her PhD in Klaus Harter’s group at the Center for Plant Molecular Biology, Tuebingen. She joined us in spring 2012 as an ERC-funded postdoctoral fellow working on plant polyphosphate metabolism. She characterized a novel enzyme mutant in Arabidopsis using plant genetics and cell biology (Lorenzo, Witthoeft et al., Nature Plants, 2019). In summer 2014 she joined the department of Gerd Juergens at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
Jinsheng Zhu, postdoctoral fellow (2015-2020)
Jinsheng studied Biology at Henan Normal University (2004-2008) and did his master thesis at Beijing Normal University (2008-2011). He then moved to Switzerland and did his PhD in Markus Geisler’s lab at University of Fribourg. There, he worked on the auxin-actin regulatory loop (2011-2014). He joined our lab in Geneva in May 2015. Jin discovered the two inositol pyrophosphosphate kinases/phosphatases are master regulators of plant phosphate homeostasis (Zhu et al., eLife, 2019) and investigated if inorganic polyphosphates exist in higher plants (Zhu et al., Plant J, 2020, Lorenzo-Orts et al., LSA, 2019). Jin is now a permanent staff scientist at the Bioscience and Biotechnology Institute of Aix-Marseille (BIAM).