I am leading the Functional Phosphoproteomics group at VIB since 2013. My long-term goal as a researcher is to explain how plants develop and adapt to environmental changes. I am interested in conserved cellular phosphorylation-driven signaling mechanisms orchestrating warm temperature-mediated growth responses in plants. In the future, I will go beyond cataloguing dynamic changes in phosphorylation, and explore the functional role of conserved phosphorylation events and start visualizing signaling networks for which we will validate the connection between kinases/phosphatases and their substrates.
 
During my PhD at VIB-UGent with Tom Beeckman (2001 – 2006) [including research visits to University of Leeds (UK) and Duke University (USA)], I contributed to our understanding of lateral root organogenesis. From 2006 – 2010, I joined the lab of Gerd Jürgens (Germany) as a postdoctoral research fellow funded by EMBO and Marie Curie Fellowships, focusing on early embryogenesis and auxin signaling. From 2011 – 2015, I established my first research group at the University of Nottingham (UK), funded by a prestigious BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellowship and focusing on small peptide and receptor kinase signaling in plant development. In 2013, I returned to VIB (Belgium) and established my second research group. Since then, I started to explore phosphorylation-mediated signaling during abiotic stress, using an up-to-date workflow to capture protein phosphorylation proteome-wide. In 2014, I became a UGent professor. Finally, I recently developed a completely new research program, focusing on temperature signaling.
 

Hongyan achieved a master degree in botany in 2022. Afterwards, she started her PhD project at PSB in October, in the Functional Phosphoproteomics group, where she is guided by Ive De Smet. Currently, she focused on the roles of ABA in high temperature adaptation in Arabidopsis. At this stage, she has mainly explored the cooperative function of kinase, phosphatase and transcription factors.

In 2018, she earned her master's degree, after which she embarked on her PhD journey with the Functional Phosphoproteomics group at VIB in October of the same year. Currently, she is engaged in investigating protein phosphorylation and ubiquitination-mediated signalling mechanisms to adapt to warm temperatures in Arabidopsis. Her work also involves exploring the potential functions of MAP4K family members by generating interactome networks and genetic tools.

She accomplished her master study in 2017, which is followed by the PhD study with the CSC scholarship in the Functional Phosphoproteomics group at VIB in October 2017. She is working on the high temperature-mediated signaling events in Arabidopsis and crops (wheat, soybean). In Arabidopsis, She is mainly exploring how warm temperature prioritizes growth over jasmonate-mediated responses. Additionally, She is also interested in warm temperature-regulated early signaling events and the correlated networks using phosphoproteomics. In wheat, she applies phosphoproteomics to explore how high temperature affects the reproductive growth and development, followed by functional validation under high temperature.
 

Božena obtained her PhD in the Laboratory of Pollen at the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2024, where she employed multi-omic approaches to investigate gene expression dynamics during pollen development. She also worked on functional characterisation of conserved cytoplasmic chaperones that play a key role in plant development and stress response in Arabidopsis and Marchantia polymorpha. In September 2024, Božena joined the Functional Phosphoproteomics group at VIB. Her current research focuses on uncovering common mechanisms underlying heat and cold thermotolerance responses in Arabidopsis and Soybean. She aims to identify key sensor elements that trigger these response pathways using both phosphoproteomics and functional studies.

PREDOCTORAL FELLOW

Tingyu Zhu studied on cell biology at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in China. Her research focused on the role of GCCK/RP motif and conserved cysteine residues in distribution and function of Tetraspanin proteins in Arabidopsis. After her master‘s degree, she started her PhD in Advanced Live Cell Imaging group of Prof. Daniel Van Damme since September 2022. She is working on unraveling the role of temperature-dependent AtEH/Pan1 phosphorylation.

Yajie embarked on her doctoral research study in the Functional Phosphoproteomics group, following the completion of her master's degree in 2022. Her current project mainly focuses on utilizing structural proteomics approaches to investigate protein structural changes in plants under high temperature stress. Additionally, she integrates phosphoproteomics to identify potential biosensors in plants under high temperature stress conditions.

In 2018, he obtained his Master's degree from National Taiwan University (NTU), where he focused on the regulation of hypocotyl development by light quantity, specifically far-red and blue light, and the phytohormone jasmonate. The research was conducted in Prof. Hsu-Liang Hsieh’s lab. After completing his MS degree, he joined Chin-Min Kimmy Ho's lab at Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 2019 as a research assistant to work on stomatal development. The paper, published in 2022, describes the impact of the cuticle on the leaf surface on stomatal differentiation. To pursue a doctoral degree and broaden his horizons, he left Taiwan and joined Prof. Ive De Smet's lab at PSB as a PhD student. Currently, his research focuses on the regulation of stomatal dynamics in plants under high temperature and protein condensation through protein phosphorylation and ubiquitination. In addition, he is currently attempting to establish several pipelines for constructing plant proteome and phosphoproteome information through mass spectrometry-based protein identification.