Research Interests
During my studies in Molecular Biotechnology and Cell Biology I became very interested in mechanisms that control the formation of complex structures in developing tissues. I have been working on compartment boundaries in Drosophila under the supervision of Prof. Christian Dahmann (TU Dresden, Germany), on innate immunity with Prof. Bill Warren (James Cook University, Australia) and on germline stem cells in the laboratory of Prof. Margaret Fuller (Stanford, USA). For my PhD, which I undertook in Prof. Jan Lohmann’s laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany), I moved to plants and investigated the function of genes regulated by the central stem cell regulator WUSCHEL in the shoot apical meristem. The focus of my postdoctoral research is to understand how lateral organs develop from previously undifferentiated tissue, both in Arabidopsis and in other plant species.
Key Publications
Yang W., Schuster C., Beahan C., Charoensawan V., Peaucelle A., Doblin M., Bacic A., Wightman R., and Meyerowitz E. M (2016). Regulation of meristem morphogenesis by cell wall synthases in Arabidopsis. Curr Biol. 26, 1404-1415.
Gruel, J., Landrein B., Tarr P., Schuster C., Refahi Y., Sampathkumar A., Hamant O., Meyerowitz E. M., and Jönsson H (2016). An epidermis-driven mechanism positions and scales stem cell niches in plants. Sci Adv. 2, e1500989.
Schuster C., Gaillochet C., and Lohmann J. U (2015). Arabidopsis HECATE genes function in phytohormone control during gynoecium development. Development 142, 3343-3350.
Melnyk C. W., Schuster C., Leyser O., and Meyerowitz E. M (2015). A developmental framework for graft formation and vascular reconnection in Arabidopsis thaliana. Curr Biol. 25, 1306-1318.
Schuster C., Gaillochet C., Medzihradsky A., Busch W., Daum G., Krebs M., Kehle A., and Lohmann J. U (2014). A regulatory framework for shoot stem cell control integrating metabolic, transcriptional, and phytohormone signals. Dev Cell 28, 438-449.
