Biochemical Journal Young Investigator Award winner

Karolin Eifler

Karolin Eifler has been a PhD student in the group of Professor Dr Andreas Bachmair since 2006. Last year the group moved from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne to the Max F. Perutz Laboratories at the University of Vienna. Before starting her PhD, she worked on a protein family of magnesium transporters in Arabidopsis thaliana and obtained her diploma of biology at the University of Bonn in 2006. Currently her research focuses on a protein family of ubiquitin-conjugating enzymes that play an important role in plant programmed cell death. Loss of function mutants show altered cell death in response to oxidative stress and plant pathogens. Interaction studies revealed that the C-terminus of these proteins mediates dimerization. Her main interest is now to analyse the structure of this interaction domain and to find out whether it is involved in transmitting oxidative signals in a signalling cascade leading to programmed cell death in plants.