Frank Menke

I have been working on defence signal transduction and protein phosphorylation through out most of my professional life, progressing from single molecule analysis towards proteome scale networks.

My initial work focussed on elicitor triggered mitogen activated protein kinases (Menke et al, 2004; Menke et al, 2005). To address defence signalling in an unbiased way I set up quantitative shotgun phospho-proteomics using stabile isotope labelling in Arabidopsis which I also applied to lateral root initiation (Benschop et al, 2007; Mithoe and Menke 2011; Mithoe et al., 2012; Zhang et al 2013).

I’m currently developing stable isotope based proteomics methods for network biology of early defence signalling based on targeted phospho-proteomics using selected reaction monitoring (collaboration with Prof Ruedi Aebersold). These quantitative proteomics approaches will help to decipher the signalling network required for microbe associated molecular pattern-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis.