Pollen Tip Growth

1. Biophysics of tip growtha. Water transport and turgor pressureb. Endogenous electrical fieldsc. Ion currents and ion transportersd. Ion homeostasis, ion gradients2. Technical improvements to study tip growtha. Microfluidics in tip growthb. Semi-in-vivo techniquesc. Transformation of pollend. Live cell imaging (SPIM, STED, etc.?)3. Subcellular processesa. Organelle dynamics4. Exocytosisa. Cytoskeletonb. Cell wallc. Ion gradientsd. Signaling networks (IP3, ROS, Ca2+, phosphorylation, etc.)5. Tipomics: omic approaches in tip growtha. Metabolomicsb. Proteomicsc. Functional transcriptomicsd. Epigenomics6. Modeling tip growtha. Computer modelingb. Models of growing tips

Gerhard Obermeyer studied Biology at the University of Constance, Germany, with majors in membrane and cell biophysics. His Ph.D. thesis at the Technical University of Karlsruhe (Germany) included the quantitative imaging of tip-localised Ca2+ gradients in pollen tubes and first patch-clamp experiments to characterise pollen ion channels. As a post-doc he worked at Wye College (now part of Imperial College, London, UK) on ion channels from guard cells and pollen grains, and continued pollen research at the Institute of Plant Physiology (Univ. Salzburg, Austria) with intermediate fellowships to visit labs at the Univ. Adelaide (Australia), at Univ. Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (Cuernavaca, Mexico) and at Univ. Oxford (UK) to work on symbiosome membranes and intracellular pH measurements, respectively. Finally, he became associate professor at the Univ. Salzburg where he established molecular plant physiology in research and teaching.

Prof Obermeyer's research focusses mainly on pollen physiology. Growth of pollen tubes through the style tissue is a prerequisite for successful fertilization which guarantees high crop yields for human nutrition. Problems caused by global warming like drought and temperature stress, can disturb pollen function and are studied using several single molecule/cell techniques in combination with -omics approaches to reveal functional protein complexes in the plasma membrane and their role in osmosensing and osmoregulation as well as in tip growth.

José Feijó studied Biology in the University of Lisbon, Portugal, specializing in Cell Biology of orchid pollen and a Master in Plant Biotechnology. During his Ph.D. he enlarged his focus into development, progressively introducing electrophysiology and mathematical modelling as routine approaches to the study of pollen tubes. A Fullbright fellowship brought him to Peter Hepler lab in the U. Massachussets in Amherst to further deepening his skills on ion imaging.