Shaping meiotic recombination in plant genomes

Speaker: prof. Piotr Ziółkowski, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Talk:  Shaping meiotic recombination in plant genomes

Time: 04.12.2026, 09:00

Venue: Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, Abrahama 58, hall 042B

Prof. Piotr Ziółkowski is a plant geneticist and molecular biologist at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he leads the Laboratory of Genome Biology and, since 2026, serves as Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. He obtained his PhD at the Institute of Plant Genetics, Polish Academy of Sciences, and later worked at the University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge before returning to Poznań to establish his own research group.

His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms controlling meiotic recombination in plants, particularly the regulation of crossover number and distribution. His group combines genetics, cytology, genomics and high-resolution recombination mapping to study how genetic variation, chromosome structure and chromatin influence crossover formation. A major goal of this work is to understand how meiotic recombination can be manipulated to facilitate plant breeding.

His work has contributed to the discovery of the heterozygosity juxtaposition effect and to identifying HEI10 as a limiting factor for meiotic crossover formation. His research has been supported by EMBO, the Foundation for Polish Science and the National Science Centre.