News

April 2025 - Award for Merle Whooop whoop! Merle was awarded the Bushnell-Roelfs Memorial Award for Early-Career Researchers to present her data at the 17th International Cereal Rusts and Powdery Mildews Conference (ICRPMC2025) in Vancouver, Canada in June 2025. She will give a 30 min presentation. Congratulations on this achievement and have a great conference time!

March 2025 - CEPLAS Rotations @ Saur Lab Linus Börnke and Stanik Kopriva join the Lab for their CEPLAS PhD rotations. Welcome both, Hope you will have a good time here!!!

January 2025 - Publication Alert Merle published her second PhD paper in MPMI. Check out this comprehensive review: Technical Advances Drive the Molecular Understanding of Effectors from Wheat and Barley Powdery Mildew Fungi.

December 2024 - Gabriel finished his training as BTA- Congrats from all of us

Gabriel did his final internship with us for his qualification as BTA. Congratulations for successfully completing your training! Lucky for us, Gabriel will stay around to get some more work experience. An official welcome to the lab !

November 2024 - In house Xmas Party!

Cozy Group christmas party with Feuerzangenbowle and Glühwein….

November 2024 - Goodbaye Wipke & Welcome Dennis!

Wipke had to leave us. All the best for your next adventures. However, Dennis starts as a WHK in our lab. Welcome! Have a good start & we hope you will be having a good time in our lab.

June 2024 - Conference time again!

Izzy chairs the ‘Disease Resistance Mechanisms’ session at the 2024 International Plant Molecular Biology Congress in Cairns, Australia and presents the teams work. The other session speakers are: Thorsten Nuernberger (ZMBP), Natsumi Maruta (UQ), Simon Williams (ANU) and Chih-Hang Wu (Academia Sinica). What a great meeting and great session! Thx to all speakers and the audience

June 2024 - Welcome Ishani!

Ishani joins us in Cologne. She moved over from Göttingen, where she did her PhD. Welcome Ishani and have a good start.

March 2024 - Conference time!

Both, Wei and Merle present their work on the AVRa virulence function at the 43rd Annual meeting of the DPG Working Group Host-Parasite-Interaction in Bonn.

But that is not all, Wei and Merle’s work is also presented by Isabel at the 37th Conference of the Section ’Plant Physiology and Molecular Biology of the German botanical Society (MBP2024)

January 2024 - Sophie starts her PhD

Welcome back in the team! Really great to have you!

December 2023

winter is coming….Xmas get together of the group. Bit smaller this year, we will go for a big party next year :-)

November 2023 - Publication alert

We contributed to this great work from the Zuccaro group published in Current Biology. It involves every aspect, from MS to genetics…good read A GH81-type β-glucan-binding protein enhances colonization by mutualistic fungi in barley.

July 2023 - Publication alert

Published - Whop Whop: A dominant-negative avirulence effector of the barley powdery mildew fungus provides mechanistic insight to barley MLA immune receptor activation.

July 2023 - Sophie defends her Master thesis

OMG we did not take a picture! But I guess it is too late. Sophie did a great job in defending her project on cell death in monocots and AVRa-mediated cell death inhibition

June 2023 - Publication alert

We contributed to this work from the Wulff group (KAUST) published in Nature genetics. Kinase domain containing R protein in wheat. Totally unusual (at least to date….)…worth a read. The wheat stem rust resistance gene Sr43 encodes an unusual protein kinase.

May 2023 - Publication alert

Wei’s work on proximity-labeling of Ustilago See1 targets in maize: Combination of in vivo proximity labeling and co-immunoprecipitation identifies the host target network of a tumor-inducing effector in the fungal maize pathogen Ustilago maydis.

March 2023 - Conference alert

Isabel holds a talk at the 42nd Annual meeting of the DPG Working Group Host-Parasite-Interaction in Freising.

February 2023 - Conference alert

Merle & Sophie present at the Molecular Biology of Plants Conference in Hennef. Sophie got a travel grant to attend the meeting!! WhopWhopp - Good job, great posters!

January 2023 - Publication alert

We uploaded our manuscript on A dominant-negative avirulence effector of the barley powdery mildew fungus provides mechanistic insight to barley MLA immune receptor activation. The manuscript was evaluated positively and is currently in revision for a soon publication :-)

December 2022

winter is coming….Xmas party and Sophie’s lovely advent calendar

November 2022 - Some members dared to enter UoC on 11.11.22

Of course, they dressed up to not appear too conspicuous among all the Jecken @ Zülpicher Str. Alaaf!

October 2022 - Retreat with AG Döhlemann

in St. Goar. Great science and great fun!

August 2022 - Conference alert

Merle presents a poster on her work on AVRA effectors at the Botaniktagung of the German Society for Plant Sciences, DBG. Very well done!

June 2022 - Travel grant for Merle - Great job!

Merle receives a travel grant to attend the 2022 Botaniktagung of the GGerman Society for Plant Sciences, DBG. Great job!

June 2022 - New group member

Sophie starts her work on AVR-mediated cell death inhibition. Welcome Sophie!

May 2022 - Another group dinner

@ Duma. Last time together with our SHK Judith, who is off to the US for her Bachelor ’s thesis

May 2022 - Publication alert

We published a review in Essays in Biochemistry: Evolution of resistance (R) gene specificity. Pre-print available on Zenodo

April 2022 - Conference alert

The Saur lab attend this years French-German Workshop on Biotrophy and Plant Immunity AND both, Wei and Isabel gave an oral presentation! Thanks for having us!

April 2022 - Publication alert

With our collaborators, we published in New Phytologist: The stem rust effector protein AvrSr50 escapes Sr50 recognition by a substitution in a single surface-exposed residue.

February 2022 - First group dinner

@ La barra -cava y más-. But we forgot to take a picture….. :-(

February 2022

Big welcome to Merle and Wei!! Let’s get started!

January 2022

Emma joins the Lab! Whoop Whoop!

September 2021 - Conference alert

Isabel presents our newly etablished group’s projects @ the annual Powdery Mildew workshop. Meant to be in Zürich, but moved online instead…. :-(

September 2021

Saur Lab (AG Saur) starts @ the Institute for Plant Sciences, University of Cologne. Lots of stuff to organize now!