Congratulations to Caroline Gutjahr who was awarded the President’s medal from the Society of Experimental Biology, UK.

Caroline Gutjahr investigates the developmental biology and function of arbuscular mycorrhiza, a symbiosis between plants and beneficial soil fungi, which enhances plant nutrition with mineral nutrients. Using a combination of molecular biology, genetics, cell biology and biochemistry she aims at understanding plant molecular mechanisms, which regulate and execute re-arrangements of plant cells that allow arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi to colonize these cells. Furthermore, she is fascinated by the question, how molecular mechanisms interconnect plant and symbiosis development, and how this may allow plants to orchestrate arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis with their physiological needs under changing environmental conditions. She cares about agricultural application and has recently started using natural variation genetics to investigate the genetic basis of symbiosis-mediated increases in plant performance in the greenhouse and in the field.

After studying Biology at the University of Freiburg, Germany, Caroline received her first training in arbuscular mycorrhiza research in the laboratory of Paola Bonfante at the University of Turin, Italy, where she studied the effect of fungal signaling molecules on root starch metabolism. For her PhD and a short Postdoc, she joined the lab of Uta Paszkowski at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and investigated arbuscular mycorrhiza development in rice. She then moved to the University of Munich (LMU), Germany to establish her own group supported by the Emmy Noether program of the DFG and hosted at the chair of Martin Parniske. Very recently, Caroline received an ERC starting grant and was appointed as Tenure Track Professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).