Klaudia Ordyniak completes her half-time seminar
PhD student Klaudia Ordyniak has presented her half-time seminar at the Umeå Plant Science Centre, with Professor Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso (University of Leeds) as opponent. Klaudia’s project investigates how the transcription factors ZAT11 and ZAT18 act as a transcriptional brake on cell wall integrity signalling.
NEWS
Cell Wall Dynamics Lab
5/21/20262 min read
On 21 May 2026, Klaudia Ordyniak, PhD student in the Green Cell Wall Dynamics Lab, presented her half-time seminar at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC). The half-time seminar is the central evaluation point of the doctoral programme: the student reports the progress made during the first half of the PhD, an external opponent examines the work, and the plan for the remaining period is discussed.
Klaudia’s seminar, entitled “ZAT11 and ZAT18 act as a transcriptional brake on Cell Wall Integrity signalling”, addressed a regulatory gap in our understanding of how plants monitor their cell walls. Cell wall integrity (CWI) signalling relies on receptors such as the receptor-like kinase THESEUS1 (THE1), but little is known about what switches these receptors on and off, or what determines the amplitude of the response. The project started from previous observations during Laura's time at NTNU (Trondheim), in Thorsten Hamann's lab. Then, we found that two C2H2-type zinc finger transcription factors, ZAT11 and ZAT18, respond jointly to cell wall damage and loss of turgor. Klaudia’s working hypothesis is that these proteins act as transcriptional repressors that attenuate CWI signalling, preventing overactivation while preserving an appropriate response. The project pursues three objectives: i) to characterise ZAT11 and ZAT18 as regulators of CWI signalling; ii) to determine how they coordinate the mechanical adaptation of the cell wall; and iii) to investigate their integration with abiotic stress resistance. To this end, Klaudia combines mutant analysis, gene expression profiling, Brillouin microscopy for the non-invasive measurement of cell wall mechanics, hormone profiling, and cell wall compositional analysis. Her results to date indicate that ZAT11 and ZAT18 contribute both to the transcriptional and to the mechanical arm of the response to cell wall damage, and she outlined the experiments planned for the second half of her PhD.
Besides, we were delighted that Professor Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso (University of Leeds) acted as opponent, and that she travelled to Umeå to do so. The day before the seminar, Yoselin also gave an invited talk at UPSC introducing the research of her group on cell walls and plasmodesmata, and on the application of this knowledge to biotechnology and biomaterials. Her questions during the seminar led to a rigorous and constructive discussion that will be valuable for the next stage of the project.
We thank Yoselin for her time and engagement, the members of Klaudia’s reference group (Stéphanie Robert, Stéphane Verger, Maria E. Eriksson, and Rishikesh Bhalerao) for their guidance, and everyone who attended. Congratulations, Klaudia, on reaching this milestone.