Interview with Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë
Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë
- Please tell us about yourself and your research/institution.
I am an Associate Professor in Plant Biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Our lab research how plants protect themselves from sunburn. We moved in April 2024 from Umeå Plant Science Centre in Sweden. There, it was an amazing perk to meet and connect with Joanna and other Agrisera team members in person several times throughout the year, and receive our reagent orders on the same day they were ordered!
- What motivated you to get into plant science?
I wanted to make biofuel from renewable resources, I started my research experience with the microalga Chlamydomonas (affectionately called Chlamy) and studying photosynthetic electron transport for hydrogen production. I realized that much basic science is needed to understand and optimize natural processes, and how thrilling the job of an academic scientist is in investigating how nature works. I've since studied photoprotection mechanisms in the plant model Arabidopsis, with Kris Niyogi at UC Berkeley during my postdoctoral training, and now with my own group. Algae, plants, are so important for our human lives: they give us food, fiber, feed, fuel and oxygen!
- How have you used (Agrisera) antibodies in your research?
Agrisera is THE provider of antibodies for photosynthetic research, I learned alongside Catherine de Vitry during my PhD at IBPC Paris how to analyze protein content in different mutant Chlamy strains. IBPC is one of the birthplaces of many chloroplast protein antibodies sold by Agrisera, it felt there was no limit to the questions we could answer, they had them all!
A notable moment during my postdoctoral training was when we had just found an unknown protein to be involved in photoprotection now named relaxation of qH1 (ROQH1). We were about to design an antibody but I searched the Agrisera website to see if they might already have an antibody against it (this was a long shot) but they did! These was thanks to Agrisera's work in collaboration with Sabeeha Merchant and Arthur Grossman's labs where they had generated antibodies of several "greencut" proteins, those that are conserved throughout the green lineage but not present or poorly conserved in non-photosynthetic organisms.
- Any further comments?
We're tremendously thankful for Agrisera's products and Joanna's help troubleshooting and answering our numerous immunoblots' related inquiries. Please check us out here: https://malnoelab.com/ and contact us with any questions! See also for a recent article about our team: https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/04/alizee-manoe-photosynthesis-iu-research
Links
• Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë
• Malnoë Lab, Indiana University Bloomington
• Agrisera Antibodies to GreenCut proteins
• Agrisera Antibodies to Photosynthetic Research
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2025-10-01