Merel Steenbergen Email & Phone Number

Naarden

Utrecht Area, Netherlands

Thrips are tiny-cell-content-feeding insects that cause severe plant growth reduction and discoloration of leaves and fruits. Moreover, thrips are important vectors of plant viruses. The control of thrips relies mainly on the use of pesticides but still 15-20% of crop- and ornamental production is lost annually. Implementations of new EU regulatory measures want to ban the use of pesticides in the near future. Therefore, it is of great importance to develop alternative plant-protection strategies. As a PhD student I am working in the ‘Green defense Against Pests’ (GAP) project which focuses on the development of sustainable and environmental friendly plant-protection strategies. The project is funded by the STW and at least ten Dutch companies that do not only support the project in cash, but also provide access to breeding lines and technical facilities. Together with researchers of five Dutch Universities all aspects of the problem will be covered. The GAP project has two main themes: (1) the identification of metabolites that can protect plants against thrips or that can improve the performance of biocontrol organisms and (2) the characterization of the plant’s insect recognition and defense signaling modules that are critical to defense responses. I am working on the second theme with the aim to investigate the dynamics of the defense signaling network at high resolution of Arabidopsis, pepper and white cabbage during their interaction with Western flower thrips and Onion thrips using a state-of-the-art next-generation genomics/bioinformatics approach. This approach will allow us to make models of plant immune signaling sectors and identify novel key regulators and genes of plant defense against thrips that can be applied in breeding programs

Plant-microbe Interactions

I got accepted to the Experimental Plant Sciences (EPS) MSc talent program. During this program, 12 MSc students got the opportunity to write their own PhD proposal. Additional training in academic writing and presentation skills was given to prepare the students in the best possible way to write and present/defend their own proposed research. The best 4 proposals received a fellowship.

Lausanne Area, Switzerland

For my 8-month- internship I participated in a research project in the group of Prof. Philippe Reymond. I studied the negative crosstalk between two defense signaling pathways of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana when subjected to eggs of the large cabbage white (Pieris brassicae) and wounding. Techniques that I mainly used during this study were GUS staining and quantitative real-time PCR analyses. As a side project I also collaborated on EMS-mutagenesis.

Utrecht Area, Netherlands

I attended my 9-months-internship at the Plant- Microbe Interactions group of Prof. Dr. Ir. Corné Pieterse where I was supervised by the PhD student Irene Vos and co-supervised by Dr. Saskia van Wees. I studied the effect of the downy mildew pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis on growth, flowering time and seed production of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana when grown under different growth conditions. The techniques that I mainly used during this study were pathogen inoculation assays, Trypan blue staining and quantitative real-time PCR analyses.

Utrecht Area, Netherlands

I have been a student assistant during the 3rd-year bachelor course ‘Plants, Adaptation and Defense’ at the Utrecht University. This involved (1) assisting students during experiments and the so-called ‘mini internships’, (2) evaluating the oral presentations of the students and (3) supervising during exams.

Msc Environmental Biology, Plant Sciences

Bachelor Of Science (Bs), Biology