21.12.2011

Ian T. Baldwin, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Ecology Jena, Germany

Monday, January 9, 2012, 17:30 Uhr, Small Lecture Hall, Interfaculty Institute IFIB Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 4

Joint IFIB/ZMBP Seminar

Monday, January 9, 2012

17:30 Uhr

Small Lecture Hall, Interfaculty Institute IFIB

Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 4

Ian T. Baldwin,

Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Ecology Jena, Germany

Asking the ecosystem about the function of plant-secondary metabolites

A large fraction of our agricultural crops are protected from attack by insect pests by a single protein: the BT toxin. Whether this is a stable pest control strategy remains to be seen, but studies of how native plants have evolved resistance strategies for their eon-long battles with insect herbivores, suggest otherwise. Native plants produce a plethora of secondary metabolites, long thought to be metabolic waste products, but are now recognized to play a variety of different ecological roles in the life of a plant that include protection against abiotic and biotic stresses and communication with other plants and heterotrophs in the surrounding community. The best way to uncover the roles that these metabolites play is to query the ecosystem in which the plants evolved; however, the research is this field has a history of anthropomorphic metaphors which may prevent researchers from placing their experiments in an appropriate ecological context. This talk will describe an approach which attempts to “phytopomorphize” the researcher by using field experiments with wild-type and transformed lines of the native tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, which are silenced in their ability to produce or respond to particular secondary metabolites. Examples of the roles that secondary metabolites play in herbivore defence will illustrate the approach and describe the lengths that plants must go to evolve enduring resistance against co-evolved herbivores.

Weinhold A, Baldwin IT. 2011 PNAS 108 (19) 7855 – 7859 <link http: www.pnas.org cgi doi pnas.1101306108>www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1101306108

Allmann, S., and I.T. Baldwin. 2010. Science 329, 1075-1078.

Kessler, D., Diezel, C., and I.T. Baldwin. 2010. Current Biology 20: 237-242.

Heiling, S., et al., Baldwin, I.T. 2010 The Plant Cell 22: 273-292.

Thorsten Nürnberger, Georg Felix (ZMBP)