Professor Dr. Paweł Bednarek

Professor Dr. Paweł Bednarek is a group leader at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznań, Poland. He received his PhD at the same institution in 2001 and carried out post-doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany.  Pawel’s scientific interest focuses on the function of plant specialized metabolites in plant-microbe interactions. This includes metabolomic investigation of plant response to microbial colonization, identification of enzymatic and regulatory components of the corresponding metabolic pathways and functional characterization of the respective end products. His research focuses mainly on tryptophan-derived metabolites known as indole glucosinolates and indole phytoalexins that appeared to be indispensable for proper immune responses in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and other Brassicaceae species. In addition to the functional characterization these metabolic pathways, he is also interested in their evolution in the context of plant-pathogen arms race.