Martin Parniske is a German biologist with a specialisation in genetics, microbiology and biochemistry. He is university professor and head of the Institute of Genetics at the Faculty of Biology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Parniske's scientific focus is on the molecular interaction between plants and symbiotic and pathogenic organisms including bacteria, fungi, oomycetes and insects. Biography Parniske studied biology, microbiology, biochemistry and genetics at the universities of Konstanz and Marburg, Germany. From 1986 until 1991 he performed diploma and doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dietrich Werner on chemical communication of the root with the bacterial microbiome with a focus on flavonoids and isoflavonoids. From 1992 until 1994 Parniske carried out biochemical studies on the interaction of plant transcription factors and DNA at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany as a postdoctoral fellow funded by the German Research Foundation. From 1994 until 1998 he studied the evolution of plant disease resistance genes in the lab of Jonathan D. G. Jones. In 1998, Parniske was appointed as an independent group leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK. In 2004 he accepted a call for the chair of Genetics at the Faculty of Biology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. From 2011 until 2013 he acted as the Dean of the Faculty of Biology of the LMU Munich. As the head of the Institute of Genetics at the Faculty of Biology of the LMU Munich, Martin Parniske teaches students at the Bachelor, Master and Doctoral (Dr. rer. nat.) level. Topics taught include Genetics, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Genetics and Society, Plant Nutrition and Sustainable Food Production. Scientific contribution Genetics of plant root endosymbiosis Parniske identified a set of plant mutants defective in plant root symbioses with both arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria. These mutants enforced the idea that plant root endosymbioses with bacteria and fungi share a common genetic basis. Because arbuscular mycorrhiza dates back to the first land plant and the root nodule symbiosis is much younger, this common gene set revealed that the nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis evolved by co-opting genes from the existing arbuscular mycorrhizasymbiosis. By map-based identification of so-called “common symbiosis genes”, the Parniske lab contributed to the identification of several components directly or indirectly involved in a plant signal transduction process required for both symbioses. These include a receptor-like kinase, nucleoporins,