Leonie Luginbuehl

Labs 0083-0084
+41 22 379 31 17
E-mail

Research interests

The symbiosis between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in the soil is one of the oldest and most widespread symbioses on Earth. While it provides significant nutritional benefits to plants, the symbiosis is also associated with a substantial carbon cost. Our goal is to identify the molecular mechanisms that allow plants to mobilise fixed carbon and deliver it to their fungal partner; to understand how symbiotic, physiological and environmental factors affect carbon allocation to the fungus; and to explore whether symbiotic nutrient exchange can be optimised in crop plants. To address these questions, we combine carbon tracing and (single-cell) transcriptomics approaches with targeted mutagenesis, microscopy imaging, and molecular biology techniques in the model species rice and Medicago truncatula.

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Key Publications

Swift J., Luginbuehl L.H., Hua L., Schreier T.B., Donald R.M., Stanley S., Wang N., Lee T.A., Nery J.R., Ecker J.R. & Hibberd J.M.:
Exaptation of ancestral cell-identity networks enables C(4) photosynthesis.
Nature 2024, 636(8041):143-150. PMID: 39567684. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08204-3.

Li X.R., Sun J., Albinsky D., Zarrabian D., Hull R., Lee T., Jarratt-Barnham E., Chiu C.H., Jacobsen A., Soumpourou E., Albanese A., Kohlen W., Luginbuehl L.H., Guillotin B., Lawrensen T., Lin H., Murray J., Wallington E., Harwood W., Choi J., Paszkowski U. & Oldroyd G.E.D.:
Nutrient regulation of lipochitooligosaccharide recognition in plants via NSP1 and NSP2.
Nat Commun 2022, 13(1):6421. PMID: 36307431. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33908-3.

Luginbuehl L.H., Menard G.N., Kurup S., Van Erp H., Radhakrishnan G.V., Breakspear A., Oldroyd G.E.D. & Eastmond P.J.:
Fatty acids in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are synthesized by the host plant.
Science 2017, 356(6343):1175-1178. PMID: 28596311. DOI: 10.1126/science.aan0081.

Further Reading

Magrath I.R.K., Wong S.L., Palmer J.W., Saha A. & Luginbuehl L.H.:
Through the looking glass: A single-cell view of plant-microbe interactions.
J Exp Bot 2026, erag314. PMID: 42340022. DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erag314.

Luginbuehl L.H. & Oldroyd G.E.D.:
Understanding the Arbuscule at the Heart of Endomycorrhizal Symbioses in Plants.
Curr Biol 2017, 27(17):R952-R963. PMID: 28898668. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.042.

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