Welcome to the Azolla HS Lab

This line of research started in 2013 after a decade of work studying how plants decide where to invest the CO2 that they fixate: I discovered the role of the trehalose metabolism in regulating sugar status and development in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana1. I learnt that metabole regulation actually overrides sensing/signalling networks because metabolism is wired so as to preempt shortages. This is unlike the idea I had initially of simple feedback-regulation. 

The rationale for the switch to working with the floating and symbiotic ferns from the genus Azolla is based on my realization that agriculture sustainability is primarily limited by nutrient cycles. In addition, I still wonder how plants relate growth to the availability of carbon fixed and other nutrients.  The Azolla ferns productivity competes well with established crops yet, yields are obtained without any nitrogen fertilizer. Moreover, the ferns unusual productivity and mat formation have potential for soil-building in subsiding lowlands, such as in The Netherlands, and for plant-protein production whilst re-cycling nutrients. 

Rapid domestication of novel crops, such as for example Azolla ferns, will permit the development of sustainable primary production systems adapted to a wider variety of environments. Domestication entails full control over phases of the life-cycle of the plants for dissemination, storage and breeding; it also means that yield potential is turned into yield stability. Advances in molecular biology have recently rendered the rapid domestication feasible, which now permits to exploit botanic diversity, including that of the under-studied seed-free plants.

The overarching goal of the Azolla HS Lab research is the domestication of the Azolla ferns. Yet, to reach this goal will require fundamental advances in understanding the molecular biology of ferns, a land-plant lineage that has been little studied. It will further require advances in understanding plant adaptations to colonizing the water surface or to hosting phototrophic dinitrogen fixating bacterial consortia. 

The position of ferns as the sister lineage to seed plants is particularly interesting: insights gained with ferns will allow to investigate processes known from seed plants from an evolutionary perspective whether they are developmental, physiological or metabolic. Understanding how processes evolved in seed plants helps predict the underlying networks of control in a wider variety of plants for domestication purposes.

The Azolla HS Lab was part of the Molecular Plant Physiology laboratory, in the Biology Department of Utrecht University. It was further embedded in research at the Geosciences faculty of Utrecht University, aquatic ecology of the Radboud University in Nijmegen and at Wageningen Research. in 2019, we joined the global community aiming to accelerate the development of aquatic symbioses model systems, supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems Initiative, which we still are part of today. In 2022, the part of the research carried out at the Utrecht University was stopped as the Department Head decided that it would no longer feature in the future of the UU Department of Biology. We are looking for a new institution to further this work, please do not hesitete to contact Henriette Schluepmann should you know of a possibility. 

1Schluepmann H, Pellny T, van Dijken A, Smeekens S, Paul M (2003) Trehalose 6-phosphate is indispensable for carbohydrate utilization and growth in Arabidopsis thaliana. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 100(11):6849-54.