Jane E. Parker

Jane E. Parker is a Professor and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, where she leads the "Resistance pathway dynamics in plant immunity" research group within the Department of Plant-Microbe Interactions. She has been a Principal Investigator in the Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (CEPLAS) since 2012 and maintains extensive national and international collaborations in plant immunity research.

Professor Parker's research focuses on plant immunity mechanisms, particularly how plants detect invading pathogens and activate defense pathways. Her laboratory investigates TIR-domain enzymatic activities, NLR immunity, and plant-microbe interactions using approaches ranging from genetics, CRISPR-Cas9 technology, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, to protein biochemistry and structure-function analyses. Current projects include NLR immunity decision-making, biotic stress network architectures across plant lineages, tracking immune-stimulating nucleotides, and defense metabolites impacting plant interactions with beneficial and pathogenic fungi.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on the biochemical mechanisms of plant immune receptors, particularly TIR-domain proteins and NLR receptors, with applications across plant species from Arabidopsis to crops like rice and barley. This work has revealed conserved working principles while also identifying clade-specific variations in defense signaling modules.

• Elected as International Member of The US Academy of Sciences (NAS), 2023
• Elected as Fellow of The Royal Society (FRS), 2023
• Elected to Academy of Europe, 2017
• Elected to EMBO, 2016
• Elected to Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences, 2013
• Max-Planck Society 'C3' Independent Research Fellowship, 2004-2009
• Alexander von Humboldt 'Sofja Kovaleskaja' award, 2001

Professor Parker leads an active research group with multiple postdocs, students, and technicians. She has served on numerous editorial boards including Science, Trends in Plant Science, and Current Opinion in Plant Biology. As a Principal Investigator in CEPLAS, she has coordinated plant-microbe sections and served on various grant review panels for organizations including DFG, ERC, and NSF.

The Parker lab maintains state-of-the-art facilities for plant molecular genetics, biochemistry, and imaging. They collaborate extensively with structural biologists, organic chemists, and computational biologists to advance understanding of plant immune mechanisms. The lab is part of the CEPLAS research infrastructure, which includes specialized platforms for plant microbiota studies, synthetic biology, and data science.