Oxidative Stress Signalling

Robin Pottie graduated in 2017 as Bachelor in Biomedical Laboratory Technology at Odisee Technologycampus Gent.
During his bachelor, he worked on a project for Dr. Simon Stael developing genetic and chemical tools to alter the calcium flux in chloroplasts, which he continued after obtaining his degree.

Jingjing Huang obtained the master degree in Molecular biology and Biochemistry from Nanjing Agricultural University (China) in 2009. In 2010, She Joined the Delledonne lab in the University of Verona (Italy) to study the origins of nitric oxide in plants and mechanism that how plants perceive and transduce the nitric oxide signal in cellular pathways. She obtained the PhD degree in Biotechnology in 2014. From June 2014 till October 2016, she worked in the Messens lab in VIB-VUB center for Structural Biology, mainly focused on focued on in vitro biochemical study on the S-sulfenylated plant proteins. Since November 2016, she continued her research work on Cys OxiPTM to work in the Van Breusegem in VIB-UGent center for Plant System Biology. From September to December in 2018, Jingjing has worked in Claire Remacle lab in the University of Liege on project "Organellar Redox Signaling in Plants". Since October 2019, Jingjing works as a senior FWO postdoctoral fellow in the Van Breusegem lab focusing on Cysteine oxidations in plants.

Patrick Willems obtained his master degree at Ghent University after plant studying cold stress signaling in plants during six months in the Vaughan Hurry lab in Umeå (Sweden). Afterwards, he continued studying plant abiotic stress signaling during his PhD in the oxidative stress signaling group of Frank Van Breusegem in collaboration with the proteomics group of Kris Gevaert. This led to multiple first-author papers and several co-authorships, mostly entailing integrative –OMICS analysis of transcriptome, proteome or other datasets. As a postdoctoral researcher, he was shortly active in the proteogenomic annotation of microbial species. More recently, he is focusing on studying post-translational modifications (PTMs) in plants. Recently published work on this topic incudes the characterization of S-sulfenylation at a site-specific level in Arabidopsis and the development of an integrative plant PTM database, ‘The Plant PTM Viewer’. The bridging theme in his research is the integration and interpretation of large (multi-)omics data to make new discoveries or help addressing specific biological research questions.

Frank Van Breusegem obtained his Bachelor and Master degree at Ghent University. He is a group leader of the Oxidative Stress Signaling group at the VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology (since 2001); full professor at Ghent University and he recently was elected vice-chair of the Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics (Faculty of Sciences, Ghent University). Since his early studies under the supervision of em. Prof. Marc Van Montagu, he focuses on the molecular impact of oxidative stress on plant cells. He obtained his PhD from Ghent University (1997) with work on “Engineering Stress Tolerance in Maize”. Nowadays, the primary objective of the Van Breusegem lab is the identification and functional analysis of regulatory gene and protein networks involved in the oxidative stress response in plants. Ultimately, he aims to translate this knowledge into biotechnological crop efficiency concepts. The lab has played a pioneering role in determining H₂O₂-dependent molecular and physiological responses in plants. The Van Breusegem lab is internationally recognized mainly because of its successful multi-omics driven approaches that allowed to identify several key targets in the oxidative stress response. Frank Van Breusegem has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications (Clarivate h-index=59), is a frequent invited speaker and is monitoring editor of the leading plant journal “Plant Physiology”.

Muhammad Iqbal obtained his bachelor degree in biochemistry and master degree in biotechnology from COMSATS university Islamabad, Abbottabad. He studied nutritional and genetic diversity of on-farm cultivated buckwheat plant by using SSR markers during his master degree program. He joined Oxidative stress signaling research group of  Professor Frank since December 2021 for his doctoral program under the fellowship of HEC and UGent.