Prof. Dr. Kerstin Kaufmann

Flower development is one of the best understood and economically most important developmental processes in plants. It serves as a model system to understand organ specification and cellular differentiation in plants, starting from pools of undifferentiated 'stem cells' residing in meristems. Flower development is controlled by the action of key-regulatory transcription factors, which 'read' the genomic information and coordinate gene expression to generate specific organ morphologies. 

The goal of the Plant Cell and Molecular Biology Group's research is to understand how activities of transcription factors (TFs) result in developmental patterning and organ growth in the flower. They utilize a combination of genome-wide, biochemical and genetic analyses to study regulatory network dynamics across cells and tissues in the developing flower. They also aim to understand the evolutionary conservation of developmental control mechanisms underlying floral diversity.