Siegfried Czapski Publication Prize 2022

On 18.11.22, the Siegfried Czapski Publication Prize 2022 was awarded to the PhD candidate Mariana Murillo-Roos from the junior research group Plant Microbiosis for her publication in the open access journal "The ISME Journal - Cross-feeding niches among commensal leaf bacteria are shaped by the interaction of strain-level diversity and resource availability". 

The publication by Ms. Murillo-Roos convinced the jury in particular through the use of a light-based analytical method in the context of a real-life problem. The paper thus makes an extraordinary interdisciplinary contribution at the interface of life sciences and photonics. With the help of fluorescent protein markers, Ms Murillo-Roos succeeded in differentially labelling almost identical strains of leaf bacteria and tracking their development using various microscopic methods. The use of a novel experimental design of different nutrient environments in combination with different bacterial strains enabled completely new insights into the evolutionary processes of microorganisms and contributes significantly to the understanding of bacterial diversity.

The Siegfried Czapski Publication Prize is made possible by funding from the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung.