IEB Institute of Experimental Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences
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LABORATORY OF HORMONAL REGULATIONS IN PLANTS

Lab

Lab news

Papers, defenses, awards, grants and events from all four research groups — newest first.

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    An international team including LHR postdoc Michael Karampelias, who has led the lab’s bioluminescence research since 2021, engineered plants that glow in the dark, with light intensity signalling the levels of two hormones central to plant defence, published in Nature Communications. Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Adriana’s phloem paper is out in Current Biology — a great capstone to years of work with the Hardtke lab in Lausanne on how sieve elements finish maturing. 10.1016/j.cub.2026.06.042

    Live imaging of a maturing phloem sieve element at 14, 16 and 18 minutes, showing F-actin (orange, top row) and Ca2+ signalling (rainbow LUT, bottom row) with signalling foci marked by arrowheads

  • Lenka’s GH3 paper is out in Plant Physiology! She mapped how different GH3 enzymes split the job of switching auxin off, via aspartate or glutamine conjugation. 10.1093/plphys/kiag412

  • Congratulations to Hana Panchártková for her successful bachelor’s thesis defense!

  • Big news: our lab has been renovated, and we’re moving back in! Fresh benches, new cabinets, and a bright, reorganized space to get back to the science.

    Our newly renovated lab space

  • Mike, Nikola and Zuzka helped build a glow-in-the-dark way to watch plants fight off attackers in real time, published in Nature Communications.

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    To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, ÚEB profiled three researchers — including LHR deputy head Klára Hoyerová — about their work and path into science (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    ÚEB researchers, including LHR’s Klára Hoyerová, are launching seven newly funded Czech Science Foundation projects in 2026, a year when only 14% of standard-project applications succeeded nationwide. Read the ÚEB feature →

  • The Cytokinin Forefront Research 2026 Conference now has a date and venue: September 3–4, 2026, at the University of Graz.

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    LHR head Jan Petrášek and colleagues — including team members Anita Bírošíková and Milada Čovanová — described a surprising genetic mechanism that lets tobacco cell cultures grow and divide without the otherwise essential hormone auxin, a case of “evolution in a test tube.” Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Amel Y. keeps collecting awards. Now among Masaryk University elites.

  • We figured out why some cultured cells stop caring about auxin altogether: they just make more TIR1 receptor. Out now in New Phytologist.

  • Happy to announce we just obtained the Czech Science Foundation 3 years project! We aim to describe the role of AtENT1 and 3 in the uptake of microbe-produced CK ribosides into roots and the impact of this phenomenon on CK homeostasis.

  • Vojtěch successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, “The Evolutionary Origins of Auxin Action”! Thanks to Isabel Monte and Anthony Bishopp for travelling to Prague to serve as reviewers. Congratulations, Dr. Schmidt!

    Vojtěch Schmidt (center) with the Petrášek Lab and PhD defense committee, October 2025

  • Happy to chat about the mini-maize model with Prof. Kang Wang during her visit to the IEB.

  • Amel Y. won a poster award at the 12th Conference of the Polish Society of Experimental Plant Biology in Warsaw.

  • Nastya Holoborodko defended her master thesis at the Faculty
    of Science of the Charles University.

  • Our paper linking the activity of ENT3 CK transporter in root to SAM maintenance is out in JXB!

  • Elena Z. was selected as a speaker to present her data at the 2nd Polish RNA meeting in Poznań.

  • See our new article about high light intensity modulating heat-stress tolerance by increasing cytokinins: Cytokinin elevation caused by high light intensity contributes substantially to the increase of thermotolerance of rice plants (Plant Stress, 2025).

  • Kája Synková has defended her bachelor thesis. Congratulations! And thanks for the cake:

  • Amel Y. received the 2-year Czech Academy of Sciences PPLZ fellowship.

  • Group members pay a visit to Michał Jasiński’s lab in Poznań.

  • Klára was elected to the GACR Expert Panel for Agricultural and Biological-Environmental Sciences.

  • A new PhD student, Feijian Sun, joined the group.

  • Our Chara braunii paper is out in New Phytologist — this alga turns out to have real, working PIN-type auxin transporters. 10.1111/nph.70019

  • A warm welcome to Marharyta Kuzmenko, our new doctoral student!

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    ÚEB opened its doors for public lab tours, including LHR’s “Dark Lab” station showing off bioluminescent plants that glow to reveal their internal hormone signals (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Mike brought glow-in-the-dark Arabidopsis to DARK LAB for the Academy of Sciences’ open-doors festival at IEB — a bioluminescent plant that tells you how it’s feeling. More on X.

    Bioluminescent Arabidopsis thaliana plants glowing green against a dark background

  • Václav gave an invited lecture on the “neglected cytokinin metabolites” at the 5th International Conference on Plant Biology in Srebrno Jezero, Serbia.

  • Happy to welcome Eva as a new technician in our group!

  • Dan’s been awarded a Ph.D. degree after a successful defense of his work on the “Modulation of Cytokinin Distribution Between Roots and Shoots”. Congratulations!

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    Despite the ongoing war, our scientists — including LHR’s Petr Hošek, who lectured on statistical methods in plant biology — are running online training for agricultural researchers at Dnipro’s Institute of Grain Crops, whose fields lie dangerously close to the front line (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • We take stage at the annual Cytokinin Forefront Research meeting, this time in Olomouc.

  • Kamil R. presented as invited speaker Elena Z.’s data at the International Conference on Arabidopsis research in San Diego (US).

  • Congratulations to Amel on her first-class first-author paper. Huge amount of work.
    https://www.cell.com/plant-communications/fulltext/S2590-3462(24)00330-4

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    Research with ÚEB, Charles University, and Ghent University found that plant hormones already occur in freshwater green algae, though they likely gained their growth-regulating functions only after plants moved onto land. Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Our new preprint covering cytokinin transport facilitated by the ENT3 transporter is out on bioRxiv!

  • Vojta put together a phytohormone-profiling resource spanning the whole plant evolutionary tree, now out in Nature Communications. 10.1038/s41467-024-47753-z

  • Proud to welcome Amel Yamoune to the group.

  • Another one from the Lausanne collaboration: Ana Cecilia and Adriana show that forcing the auxin efflux machinery into the wrong place reroutes development. Published in The Plant Cell.

  • See our new article about organ-targeted cold stress in rice, emphasizing stress hormones and cytokinins behaving differently in roots and shoots: Hormonal responses of rice to organ-targeted cold stress (Environmental and Experimental Botany, 2024).

  • The position is already filled. PhD student wanted! Fully funded 4-year position. Tight deadline. Details (pdf).

  • Elena has succesfully defended her PhD: https://twitter.com/_kamilruzicka/status/1771162785214304659

  • Bachelor/master student(s) continuously wanted. (pdf, 1.5 MB)

  • A new paper on the regulation of salinity tolerance by cytokinins in potato just released. Congratulations to Václav Motyka!

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    Led by LHR group leader Kamil Růžička, a Czech-based team found that plants independently evolved matching protein variants through alternative splicing multiple times, developing machine-learning software published in New Phytologist (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Our new preprint on the CKX activity in xylem sap is available on bioRxiv!

  • Elena Zemlyanskaya et al. (2023) paper is out. Check how we analyzed auxin-related defects in pleiotropic m6A reader mutants (10.1242/dev.201775, PDF).

  • Glad to welcome Viveka in the group.

  • Ksenia Timofeyenko has defended her PhD at Masaryk University. https://twitter.com/_kamilruzicka/status/1675093081337503744

  • See our article about the role of cytokinins in heat stress and the production of volatile organic compounds: Cytokinins act synergistically with heat acclimation to enhance rice thermotolerance affecting hormonal dynamics, gene expression and volatile emission (Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, 2023).

  • A great honor to us: Catsnap was included among tools on bar.utoronto.ca

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    Marking its 70th anniversary, the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague awarded an honorary doctorate to Eva Zažímalová — who led LHR for many years before becoming ÚEB director and chair of the Czech Academy of Sciences — recognising her work on the hormone auxin (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Catsnap released! You can check the evolutionary conservation of your plant and animal splice isoforms on catsnap.cesnet.cz. Read more on: Timofeyenko et al. (2023) 10.1111/nph.18799.

  • This is an exciting week. We got funding again! Three-year GACR project awarded!

  • We got funding! Important Ministry of Education project awarded!

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    Led by LHR group leader Kamil Růžička, researchers found that alternative splicing of the PIN7 gene produces two proteins with opposing effects on auxin transport, a discovery with potential applications in crop breeding, published in New Phytologist (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    LHR’s Jana Jarošová walked through experiments testing how young rice plants respond to cold stress, tracking hormonal responses, growth arrest, and recovery, in a video report (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • ÚEB featured our organ-targeted cold-stress work in rice: comparing whole-plant, shoot-only, and root-only chilling at 5°C, with and without a 15°C pre-acclimation step, to see which treatment hits growth hardest and how well the plants recover. Read the full report on the ÚEB website.

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    ÚEB remembered long-time colleague Miroslav Kamínek, who founded the Laboratory of Hormonal Regulations in Plants in 1996 and spent decades studying cytokinins and auxins (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    Radomíra Vaňková, who researches cytokinins and stress hormones in LHR, received the Doctor of Science (DSc.) title, awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences to leading scientific figures since 2003 (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • The Czech edition of Scientific American ran a joint photo feature by ÚEB’s pollen biology lab and LHR, taking readers inside plant cells — from pollination and fertilisation to hormone transport and cell division (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    An international team led on the Czech side by LHR head Jan Petrášek traced a chain of steps linking changes in the cell membrane to regulation of auxin flow, published in Nature Plants (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    Eva Zažímalová — who led LHR for many years before becoming ÚEB director and, since 2017, chair of the Czech Academy of Sciences — won the Public Administration category of the Top Women of the Czech Republic awards for her work on plant hormones (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    LHR head Jan Petrášek’s team — with lab colleagues Klára Hoyerová, Petr Hošek, and Michaela Helusová among the co-authors — showed how plant cells regulate their internal auxin concentration by controlling the activity of transport-protein genes, published in The Plant Journal (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    Czech and Austrian researchers, with LHR head Jan Petrášek among the co-authors, described how brassinosteroid hormones regulate the auxin-transport protein PIN2 in root cells, revealing dynamics quite different from what was previously assumed, published in Nature Communications (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

  • Our group leader, Radomíra Vaňková, was awarded the Doctor of Science (DSc.) degree by the Czech Academy of Sciences, for her dissertation on the role of cytokinins in plant responses to abiotic and biotic stress. Read more on the ÚEB website.

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    LHR’s Jan Petrášek appeared on Czech Television’s Studio 6 to discuss his team’s discovery linking the hormone auxin to membrane biochemistry, and the pleasures of microscopy (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →

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    An international team led by Jiří Friml, with LHR head Jan Petrášek among the co-authors, traced the evolutionary origins of the auxin transport and signalling system that shapes plant growth, finding its roots surprisingly deep in evolutionary history (in Czech). Read the ÚEB feature →