Mark Stitt
Prof. Dr.
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology
Mark Stitt is Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam-Golm, Germany and heads the Department ‘Metabolic Networks’.
He uses systems, biochemical and physiological approaches to study the relation between the circadian clock, metabolism and growth in Arabidopsis and crop plants, as well as the function of signaling pathways especially that of the sugar-signaling metabolite trehalose-6-phosphate. This research provides information that can be used to model the dynamic links between gene expression, protein synthesis and turnover, metabolism, energy costs and growth. A growing interest is to apply these approaches to plants growing in natural or simulated natural environments. He is also interested in the regulation of photosynthesis in different environmental conditions and different crop and wild species.
Within CASS he applies ‘omics methods, especially robotized measurements of enzyme activities, to characterize the metabolic capacity of Cassava and search for cultivar differences in performance. He is also interested to understand the adaptations that allow the high rates of photosynthesis in this C3 species.
mstitt@mpimp-golm.mpg.de