Doctoral baptism: Mounashree Student successfully defended her doctoral thesis

Today, Mounashree Student defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Ustilago maydis chitin deacetylases – A story of specificity and redundancy” supported by her ‘Doktorvater’ Bruno Moerschbacher and the two other members of her doctoral committee, Prof. Volha Shapaval from Norway and Prof. Jenny Lodge from the US. Prof. Shapaval is an expert on oleagineous, i.e. lipid-producing, Mucoromycetes fungi, an odd group of fungi famously, and for unknown reasons, containing chitosan in their cell walls instead or in addition to the more typical chitin. Prof. Lodge is an expert on the human-pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans which, presumably to escape the chitin-triggered human immune system, also contains chitosan instead of or in addition to chitin in its cell walls. Clearly, Mouna had excellent ‘opponents’ with whom to discuss her own work on the plant-pathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis which also converts the chitin in its cell walls into chitosan, again presumably to escape the chitin-triggered non-self surveillance system of its host, maize. As part of her project, Mouna had developed a method for the accurate and sensitive analysis of chitin and chitosan in fungal cell walls, she had performed the first analysis of the full family of chitin deacetylase isoenzymes of a pathogenic fungus and analysed the consequences of their single or multiple knock-outs, and she had authored a review article on chitin deacetylases as potential pathogenicity factors. Small wonder the discussion was lively, and Mouna passed her defence smoothly. The subsequent baptism in our inner courtyard’s pool is the best proof of this…