Research focus

​During the course of evolution, flowering plants have become one of the predominant life forms on earth. One reason for this evolutionary success is the rapid development of an embryo alongside a nutritive tissue called the endosperm. The embryo and the endosperm are surrounded by layers of maternal tissues, the seed integuments. The trinity of embryo, endosperm and integuments form the plant seed. The seed is the embryo’s lifeboat in space and time, and stockpiled nutrients feed the germinating seedling. Seed-derived nutrients also represent the major food source for mankind, and thus a comprehensive understanding of seed development is of the utmost importance to ensure our sustenance in the decades to come.

In order to form a functional seed, all seed components have to develop in a highly coordinated manner, representing a paradigm for communication between cells and tissues. These communication events start with the double fertilization that generates the diploid embryo and the typically triploid endosperm. Though both embryo and endosperm are zygotic products, their fates differ fundamentally: while the embryo carries on to form the next plant generation, the endosperm’s destiny is to die during seed development, undergoing a developmentally regulated cell death.

The group’s major focus is to unravel the molecular control of the endosperm’s terminal differentiation steps culminating in cell death in Arabidopsis thaliana as a dicot model, and Zea mays, as a cereal system.