Michael Schroda

Biography

1988-1993 Study of Biology at the Universities Marburg and Tennessee (Knoxville) 1993-1994 Diploma thesis at the University of Helsinki 1995-1999 PhD thesis in the laboratory of Christoph Beck in the Department of Biology III, University of Freiburg 1999-2001 DAAD-postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Paris, in the laboratory of Francis-André Wollman 2001 Hans-Grisebach award for outstanding thesis 2001-2003 Assistant in the Department of Plant Biochemistry, University of Freiburg 2003-2008 Junior Professor in the Department of Plant Biochemistry, University of Freiburg 2008-2011 Group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm Since 2011 Since October 2011 Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Kaiserslautern. Head of the department. Since 2014 speaker of BioComp (http://www.uni-kl.de/biocomp/home/) Since 2015 Dean of the Faculty of Biology.

Research Interest

We are using the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as main model organism to address the following questions: 1. Which are the functions and the mechanisms of function of molecular chaperones in the chloroplast? Molecular chaperones are proteins that are capable of altering the conformation of other proteins. This property allows chaperones to be involved in a large variety of cellular processes, like the folding of proteins to the native state, the translocation of proteins across biological membranes, or the (dis)assembly of protein complexes. We are particularly interested in the roles played by the chloroplast Hsp70 system in the biogenesis/maintenance of the photosynthetic apparatus in the thylakoid membranes. 2. By which molecular mechanisms do cells regulate (trans)gene expression at the chromatin level? As transgenes randomly integrated into the nuclear genome frequently are silenced by epigenetic mechanisms, the understanding of the underlying mechanisms is crucial for biotechnology approaches in microalgae. 3. Which are the molecular mechanisms by which plant cells acclimate to temperature stress? As global warming is jeopardizing crop plant yield, it will be crucial to genetically engineer crop plants towards an improved resistance to temperature stress. For this, the understanding of the mechanisms underlying heat stress acclimation is crucial and can well be achieved by using eukaryotic microalgae as model systems. 4. How do plant cells acclimate to disturbances caused by changing environmental conditions or loss of gene function? For this we monitor cellular responses in time course experiments at the systems level (proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics). Here we have special expertise in mass spectrometry based quantitative shotgun proteomics, which to develop further will be a main focus of the group in the next years.