potassium channels required for nuclear calcium oscillations and a nuclear localized complex comprising a calcium-and-calmodulin dependent protein kinase and its phosphorylation target CYCLOPS, a DNA-binding transcriptional activator. The discovery of these genes and the postulated signal transduction processes had a major impact on this research field. The Parniske lab discovered that CYCLOPS is an interactor and phosphorylation substrate of the calcium- and calmodulin-dependent protein kinase CCaMK. Moreover, the role of CYCLOPS, initially annotated as a protein with unknown function, was identified as a DNA-binding transcriptional activator. Research in the Parniske lab clarified the role of the CCaMK/CYCLOPS complex as a major regulatory hub in symbiotic signal transduction. Evolution of plant disease resistance genes Parniske joined the laboratory of the plant geneticist Jonathan D.G. Jones at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, United Kingdom in November 1994. He addressed the fundamental question in plant disease resistance research, how plants can keep pace with the evolutionary speed of microbial pathogens that have a much shorter generation time than their host plants and thus evade recognition by plant receptors through diversifying selection. Parniske discovered that recombination within and between resistance gene clusters is a key to the evolution of novel recognition specificities of pathogenic microbes by plants. Chemical communication between bacteria and plant roots During his doctoral work Parniske observed that incompatible genotypes of soybean and rhizobia can lead to the induction of defense responses inside root nodules including the accumulation of phytoalexins, plant toxins produced upon biotic stress. Parniske discovered that the soybean phytoalexin glyceollin is toxic for soybean rhizobia and that low concentrations of isoflavonoids secreted by soybean roots induce a resistance against this antibiotic plant compound. Awards In 2013 Parniske received the European Research Council Advanced Grant for research on the “Evolution of the molecular mechanisms underlying the nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis”. He received postdoctoral fellowships from the German Research Foundation (DFG), the EMBO and the European Union. In 2014 Parniske received the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher award in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents in the field of animal and plant sciences. Selected publications List of publications, Research Gate List of publications, ORCID List of publications Thomson Reuters Researcher ID External links Martin Parniske LMU Munich References Living people 21st-century German biologists German geneticists Year of birth missing (living people) Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich