MOSS 2004 Featured Newcomer: Annick van der Wiel (youngest participant)

During my years of studying Biology at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, I had to deal with a lot of different subjects, ranging from molecular biology of bacteria to how animals behave in the wild. Now, over the course of my graduate studies, my interest in and fondness for the study of plants began to germinate and grow, until they finally blossomed into fascination for plant physiology, which is now my chosen field.

When it was time for me to choose a subject for my graduate thesis, I picked a rather unusual topic. While most of the other thesis subjects dealt with the other model plant, Arabidopsis, the one about Physcomitrella patens and ascorbate drew my attention. The title of this project was ‘What do mosses do with vitamin C?"
As a newcomer in moss research, I was offered the chance to go to MOSS 2004 in Freiburg, with a post-doctoral researcher in our lab, Geert Potters. I soon realised what a great opportunity this was for me to get to know Physcoworld and its inhabitants. Later I learned that I was actually the youngest participant in MOSS 2004!

At the conference, it turned out we weren’t the only one studying ascorbate in P. patens. Christina Lunde and her team, from the University of Adelaide, also had a poster on ascorbate. We had a nice talk with her, and discussed the possibility that perhaps the two labs can work together in the future. MOSS 2004 was really a good occasion to meet new friends from all over the world.

Anyway, I really caught the "Physco-fever" in Freiburg, so upon arrival in Antwerp (after a good night’s sleep), all plans to squeeze the little ascorbate secrets out of Physcomitrella were lined up, and we started off with our moss work right away. The future plans we have for Physcomitrella are to determine the activity of key proteins in ascorbate metabolism, link ’putative gene sequences’ to activity, and modify Physcomitrella ascorbate metabolism via creation of full or partial knock-outs. Hopefully, by next year we will have more data to present in MOSS 2005. I am really excited to meet the friendly MOSS people again!