University of Helsinki

Our research

We are concentrating our research efforts on stress signalling in the plant cell under hypoxia or anoxia, i.e. under low oxygen concentration or under total lack of oxygen. This stress leads to changes in cellular behaviour which results either adaptation to the environment or to cell death either due to necrosis or programmed cell death (PCD).

Programmed cell death and especially mitochondria as initiators of the PCD pathway, have lead us to our second topic, xylem cells, which undergo PCD and cell wall lignification before cell death.

Xylem and lignin related projects, which started in 1998, concentrate on lignin biosynthesis in developing woody tissue of Norway spruce and Silver birch, both of which are economically important trees in Finland. We have studied especially the last step in lignification, the polymerisation of lignin monomers by peroxidases. This is of importance as lignin is a compound that gives support to xylem cells (and the whole trees), and on the other hand, has to be removed from wood pulp when white paper is produced.