Science: interests, views and decisions

Understanding biology is my motif, the choice of organsims has always been secondary. I tend to say 'I am a biologist' rather than a geneticist, microbiologist, mycologist or whatever. Simple considerations led to the realm of Mycota as most appropriate organsisms:

• Fungi display a wealth of beautiful differentiation programmes, sexually and vegetatively
• Fungi can be studied with relatively simple microbiological techniques
• Phylgenetically, fungi range near the basis of eukarotic organisms
• Fungi have a tendency towards stream-lined genomes
• Fungi are less studied compared with the two other larger eukaryotic groups, plants and animals

Many scientific problems from fundamental and applied biology have attracted my attention:

• Understanding fungal differentiation programmes, especially sexual and parasitic differentiation in mucoralean fungi (Zygomycetes)
• Understanding the role of sexuality and parasitism for evolution
• Understanding genetic and physiological parallels between sex and parasitism
• Learning about the phylogenetic origin of fungi
• Understanding how bacteria and archaea genomes managed to organise into a eukaryotic cell
• Understanding origin and dynamics of the genetic mosaic of nuclei
• Understanding the role of repetitive DNA. Why does it accumulate? Why and how is it – sometimes – removed?
• Why are genomes essentially stable despite their many elements that favour flexibility?
• Understanding the development and evolution of fungal populations, especially of phytopathogens
• Molecular diagnosis and taxonomy of phytopathogens
• Rendering determination of fungi so easy that non-experts can do this, by all sorts of markers
• Introducing novel fungi into biotechnology by making them amenable to genetic analysis, genetic manipulation and, thus, strain improvement

Taken together all these questions that we tackle intellectually and experimentally end in a single simple question: What do genomes do and how do they interact with their environment?

If you want to learn more, you may wish to look at the publications of my professional team:

• Institute page: Chair of General Microbiology and Microbe Genetics: http://www.uni-jena.de/biologie/mikrobio
• Fungal Reference Center Jena: http://www.frc-jena.de