University of Helsinki

Docent, senior lecturer Kurt Fagerstedt

kurt.fagerstedt(at)helsinki.fi

Kurt Fagerstedt is the leader of the research group
and the leader of Plant Biology unit at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences for the administrative period 2007-2009.

He defended his Ph.D. thesis in 1988 at the University of St Andrews in Scotland in the research group of Prof. Robert. M.M. Crawford, and is now working as senior lecturer and Docent at Helsinki University.

Kurt Fagerstedt’s research group concentrates on abiotic stress tolerance and especially on the signaling which takes place in plant cells during stress and programmed cell death (PCD).

Details of this study has lead us further to the antioxidant protection of plant tissues, to the very interesting role of plant mitochondria in the signaling of PCD and energy conservation during stress, to the regulated differentiation and PCD of tracheids in woody tissues and also to the secondary cell wall structures and especially lignin in the cell walls.

The methods we are using in this work vary wildly from confocal microscopy to isolation and analysis of plant mitochondria and to genetic transformation of Norway spruce to alter the lignin structures in the cell walls. >> Publications