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We study the evolution of genes, genomes and (polyploid) organisms

Yves Van de Peer (YVdP) obtained his PhD in 1996 at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz, Germany, he was hired at Ghent University (BE) as Group Leader of VIB (Department of Plant Systems Biology) in 2000 and as an Associate Professor at Ghent University in 2001, and promoted to Full Professor in 2008. YVdP’s research group is considered a genome analysis powerhouse specialized in the study of the structure and evolution of (plant) genomes. Because of their unique expertise and experience in gene prediction, genome annotation, and genome analysis, his research group has been, and still is, involved in many international genome projects. 
YVdP is particularly interested in the study of gene and genome duplications as well as in the evolution of novel gene functions after duplication. YVdP published more than 450 papers, many of which in high-profile journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Reviews Genetics, Science, PNAS, Genome Research, and The Plant Cell. YVdP has an H-index > 100 and his work has been cited more than 65,000 times. For many consecutive years, YVdP has been a Highly Cited Researcher. In 2013, YVdP received an ERC Advanced Grant entitled “DOUBLE-UP: The evolutionary significance of genome duplications for natural and artificial organism populations”, and in 2018 another one entitled “DOUBLE-TROUBLE: Replaying the ‘genome duplication’ tape of life: the adaptive potential of polyploidy in a stressful or changing environment”. YVdP is Organizer and Chair of the bi-annual international Current Opinion Conference on Plant Genome Evolution. This meeting was held in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019. In 2019, YVdP also organized the triannual International Conference on Polyploidy, Ghent, Belgium. YVdP is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB; since 2012) and serves on the Editorial Boards of five international journals (The Plant Journal, PeerJ, Genome Biology and Evolution, Current Plant Biology, Frontiers in Genetics). YVdP is also part-time professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and at the College of Horticulture at Nanjing Agricultural University, China.

Intrigued by the rapid technological advances is biotechnology, I started my PhD in 2003 mainly focusing on the development of methods to study molecular interactions in plants. My initial interest was to transfer and optimize tandem affinity purification coupled to mass spectrometry to study protein complexes in plants. During my PhD and post-doc, I continuously challenged myself to further improve and fine-tune these methods, enabling investigation of not only stable but also more transient and weak protein interactions from a diverse set of plant tissues/species. This finally led to the development of a streamlined technology platform, which formed the base of the current Plant Interactomics Facility at PSB, delivering internal and external AP-MS service for academia and industry.
In parallel I also invested quite some time in the development of methods to study interactions between proteins and DNA in situ, giving rise to the TChAP-seq technology in cell suspension cultures that provides deep coverage in the mapping of gene regulatory networks. As a complementary approach, I have been exploring methods to study protein-DNA interactions from a gene-centered view, identifying proteins bound to a genomic region of interest.
From a biological perspective, I initially applied these methods to obtain more insight into how plant cells proliferate, studying protein complexes that involve core cell cycle regulators. This allowed me to map a comprehensive cell cycle interactome in plants. In recent years, I switched my interest trying to understand how plants sense energy and nutrients and translate this information into adequate growth responses. Hereto, I am investigating the dynamic signaling networks around the TOR and SnRK1 kinases, integrating interactomics with phosphoproteomics.

Post-doctoral fellow

Judith is a postdoctoral scientist in the group of Prof. Sofie Goormachtig at VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology (FWO Junior fellowship). She obtained her PhD in 2016 in the group of Prof. Dirk Inzé, where she focused on the regulation of Arabidopsis leaf growth by sugars. After her PhD, she joined Dr. Mark Stitt’s Department in the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (Potsdam, Germany), where she studied the effect of limited nitrogen availability on flowering and tuberization in Arabidopsis and potato. In her current research, she uses this expertise to investigate plant-microbe symbiotic interactions in different plant species. Her main focus is unraveling the role of arbuscular mycorrhiza fungal proteins during symbiosis in tomato.