No photo of Michael Broberg Palmgren
  • Source: Scopus
1988 …2024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Short presentation

Research

  • Biological pumps found in plants

Pumps actively transport ions or molecules across biological membranes. Our goal is to learn how such pumps function, how they are regulated, and what their physiological roles are.

P-type ATPases form a large family of pumps in plants. P-type ATPases are fueled by ATP and catalyze the transport of a cation or a phospholipid from one side of a lipid bilayer membrane to the other. The P in P-type indicates that these pumps form a phosphorylated reaction cycle intermediate. In plants, there are different P-type pumps pumping protons, calcium, heavy metals and phospholipids. P-type pumps that we study are, amongst other functions, essential for growth, nutrient uptake, stress tolerance, vesicle formation in the secretory pathway and signal transduction.

Knowledge gained from studying P-type pumps in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana is translated to the model cereal crop barley. The goal is to develop crops that require less input and give more output. There is an urgent need to reduce the use of fertilizers and water that are not only precious resources but also causes of pollution and salinization. We also need to preserve the nature we have left, and future food and feed production should not depend on bringing more land under the plow.

  • Accelerated domestication of orphan crops and wild plants

Nine plant species provide almost all the world’s food intake, and all are refined. By comparison, there are about 380,000 wild plant species. Nature therefore offers us huge genetic variation that we do not exploit today. Instead of trying to make highly domesticated plants more robust, our research addresses how to harness the hardiness of wild plants as a starting-point to make crops that are resilient to diseases, nutrient shortage and extreme weather events.

Perennial wheatgrass

All cereal crops today are annual grasses with weak root systems. In contrast, perennial grasses have deep and long lasting root system that binds large amounts of carbon and are very efficient in taking up nutrients and water. Still, perennials have not been domesticated to a degree so that they can compete with annuals. We work to accelerate domestication of perennial wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) to make it a climate-friendly and sustainable of food and feed.

Quinoa

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is a nutritious minor crop that tolerates drought and salinity better than most other crops. Although quinoa has yet to reach its potential as a fully domesticated crop, breeding efforts to improve the plant have been limited. Molecular and genetic techniques combined with traditional breeding are likely to change this picture. We work to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying water stress tolerance in plants, and generate a knowledge base and procedure for breeding of this and other drought-tolerant crops. 

  • Why do plants not have sodium pumps and would they benefit from having one?

The cell membrane of plants is energized by proton pumps, that extrude positive charge from the cell and acidify its exterior, whereas animal cells are energized by pumps that extrude sodium ions. One important consequence is that most plants have difficulties dealing with sodium, . This becomes a problem in agriculture where continued irrigation leads to increased salinization of soils.

Attempts to generate salt-tolerant plants have focused on increasing the expression of or introducing salt stress-related genes from plants, bryophytes and yeast. Even though these approaches have resulted in plants with increased salt tolerance, plant growth is decreased under salt stress and often also under normal growth conditions. New strategies to increase salt tolerance are therefore needed. Theoretically, plants expressing an animal-type Na+/K+-ATPase should not only display a high degree of salt tolerance but should also reduce the stress response exhibited by the first generation of salt-tolerant plants under both normal and salt stress conditions.

We investigate the evolution of the plant bioenergetics system and investigate whether proton and sodium pumps can co-exist in the same cell type. This also allows for testing whether plants can be made more tolerant to salt stress.

See also: http://www.traplabs.dk

Current functions:

Professor in Plant Physiology at the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Academic degrees:

2003: D. Sc. (dr. scient.), KVL
1990: Ph.D. (fil. dr.) in Plant Biochemistry, University of Lund
1987: M. Sc. in Molecular Biology, University of Copenhagen

Employment:

1998-present: Professor, Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Univ. of Copenhagen (formerly KVL)
2004-05: Head of Department, Department of Plant Biology, KVL
2002: Visiting Professor, CNRS, Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris
1995-1997: Associate Professor, Molecular Biology Institute, Univ. of Copenhagen
1993-1995: Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Biology, KVL
1992: EMBO Long-term Fellow, August Krogh Institute, Univ. of Copenhagen
1990-1991: EMBO Long-term Fellow, EMBL, Heidelberg

 

CV

Date of birth: July 17, 1957
Citizenship: Danish
Tel /Fax: (+45) 3533 2592 / (+45) 3528 3365
Email: [email protected]

 

Address
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
Thorvaldsensvej 40
DK-1871 Frederiksberg C, Denmark

 

Academic degrees
2003: D. Sc. (dr. scient.), Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (KVL)
1990: Ph.D. (fil. dr.) in Plant Biochemistry, University of Lund
1987: M. Sc. in Molecular Biology, University of Copenhagen

 

Employment
1998-present: Professor, Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science, Univ. of Copenhagen (until 2007: KVL)

2016 Visiting Professor, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

2009-12 Chairman, the Danish Natural Science Research Council (FNU: DFF) 
2002: Visiting Professor, CNRS, Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris
1995-1997: Associate Professor, Molecular Biology Institute, Univ. of Copenhagen
1993-1995: Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Biology, KVL
1992: EMBO Long-term Fellow, August Krogh Institute, Univ. of Copenhagen
1990-1991: EMBO Long-term Fellow, EMBL, Heidelberg

 

Research interests
We have recently become interested in accelerating breeding of orphan crops and wild plants for a future agriculture that is sustainable and climate-friendly. Our traditional focus has been of P-type ATPases, a large family of ubiquitous primary active transport proteins, which in plants are involved in nutrient uptake and reallocation, signal transduction, and secretion processes. We study their function and regulation in plants by a plethora of methods going from molecular biology and membrane biochemistry to cell biology and whole plant physiology.

 

Prizes and honors
2017 Scandinavian Plant Physiology Society (SPPS) Award given 'in recognition of an outstanding contribution to plant science'

2016 Communicator of the Year 2015, University of Copenhagen-PLEN

2016 Knight of the ‘Order of Dannebrog’ for 'meritorious contribution to the sciences'

2012 Best Teacher of the Year, Faculty of Life Sciences 2012 (’Den gyldne Tyr’)

2009 Elected member of the ‘Academy for Technical Sciences, Denmark’ (ATV)

2008 Elected member of "Faculty of 1000"

2005 Lifelong right to inhabit the Knud Sand Honorary Residence, KDVS

2000 Elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters

 

Scientific societies 
2009 Elected member of the ‘Academy for Technical Sciences, Denmark’ (ATV)

2003-present: Invited member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molec. Biol.
2001-present: Board member, Societas Physiologiae Plantarum Scandinavica (SPPS)

2000 Elected member of the ‘Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters’
1999-2001: Chairman, Danish Biological Society

 

Editorial activities

2018- Member of Scientific Advisory Board of Trends in Plant Science

2016- Member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Biological Chemistry

2006-present: Co-editor for The Plant Cell
2005-present: Journal Responsible for Physiologia Plantarum
2002-present: Member of Advisory Board of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry
1999-2003: Member of Editorial Board of Plant and Cell Physiology

 

Research evaluation

2009-17 Chair, Bibliometric Group 34, Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science

2007-12 Member of the Danish Natural Science Research Council (Chair 2009-12)

2001-07 Member of the Industrial PhD Programme Committee, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Denmark

Evaluator of grant applications from the NSF (USA), US Department of Agriculture,

BBSRC (U.K) and ANSRC (Austria); Reviewer for NatureScienceEMBO J., J.

Biol. Chem., Plant CellPlant J., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, etc.

 

Administration of major national research activities (2012-)

2020-26 Coordinator of Novo Nordisk Foundation project “NovoCrops”

2019-24 Coordinator of Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens project “RaisingQuinoa”

2017-20 Coordinator of Innovation Fund Denmark project “LESSISMORE”

2013-17 Coordinator of University of Copenhagen Interdisciplinary Excellence Program “Plants for a changing world”

2010-14 Coordinator, Strategic Research Foundation project “FungalFight”

2007-17 Co-contractor and Steering Committee member, Danish National Research Foundation Centre “Centre for membrane pumps in cells and disease” (PUMPkin)

 

Member of conference committees (2012-)

2019 19th Int. Workshop on Plant Membrane Biol., Glasgow

2018 Plant Biology Europe, Copenhagen, European Plant Science Organization

2016 18th Int. Workshop on Plant Membrane Biol., Annapolis, MD

2014 IXth International Conference on Na,K-ATPase, Lunteren

2013 17th Int. Workshop on Plant Membrane Biol., Kurashiki

 

Presentations 
More than 60 presentations as invited speaker at international conferences.
More than 40 oral presentations /seminars at international universities.

 

Supervisor functions
Master students: Supervisor of >22 internal and external student projects (12 since 2006); Ph.D. students: Supervisor of 22 internal and external Ph.D. student projects (14 since 2006); Opponent at >10 Ph.D. examinations outside KU.

 

Public outreach

I have given numerous popular science seminars and written debate articles and presented plant biology in Danish and foreign newspapers (on 57 occasions since 2014), on radio and on national TV.

 

Publications

Published 170 papers in international journals with peer review; >17.000 citations in the scientific literature; 55 papers with ≥100 citations; h-index = 66[Google Scholar]/55[WoS] (June 2020).

 

Keywords

  • ???Biologi???
  • ???Bioteknologi???
  • ???Bioteknologi og planter???
  • Barley
  • ???Fremtidens afgrøder???
  • ???Fremtidens planter???
  • ???Fremtidens planter - funktionel genetik og molekylær forædling???
  • ???Genetik???
  • ???Genmodificerede afgrøder???
  • ???Genmodificerede planter???
  • ???Molekylær biologi???
  • ???Planteernæring???
  • ???Plantefysiologi???
  • ???Planters ernæring???
  • ???Planters vækst og udvikling???

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