Project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

Insects often endure harsh environmental conditions, such as cold winters or prolonged food scarcity, by entering diapause, a hormonally regulated state of dormancy that temporarily halts development and reduces metabolic activity. Building on this natural survival strategy, our project, a collaboration between the Microbial Proteomics and the Animal Physiology departments, leverages advanced proteomic approaches to unravel the dynamic regulation of diapause in the common green-veined butterfly, Pieris napi. By focusing on both global protein expression and key post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation and acetylation, this research bridges the gap between available transcriptomic insights and the actual physiological adaptations that facilitate developmental arrest and subsequent reactivation. Ultimately, the project seeks to establish a comprehensive molecular model of diapause, offering new perspectives on metabolic regulation, stress resilience, and developmental plasticity in seasonal environments.

This project is part of the German-Israeli Project Cooperation (DIP) and is funded by the DFG from January 2020 to December 2024. Our group is closely working together in a research venture with Prof. Itzik Mizrahi of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

Although the microbial degradation of plant fiber components (e.g. cellulose, hemicellulose) is a key factor of the global carbon cycle and essential for terrestrial food chains, its guiding principles are not disclosed in detail yet. A promising method for investigating potent fiber degraders in their natural habitats is a combined metaproteomics-metagenomics approach. Our group is working on the establishment, optimization and application of the MS-based metaproteome analysis.