Prof. Dr. Christian Lindermayr

Christian Lindermayr studied Biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and received his PhD in 2002 in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry. In the same year, he started as Postdoc at Helmholtz Munich at the Institute of Biochemical Plant Pathology and in 2008 he was appointed as group leader. In 2016, he habilitated in Plant Biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich.

When Lindermayr joined Helmholtz Munich, his research was primarily focusing on redox-signaling, antimicrobial peptides, and the plant immune system. He developed antimicrobial peptides for plant protection, but also peptides against human pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus and HIV, and characterized their mode of action. Moreover, he investigated the signaling mechanism of nitric oxide in context of plant stress response, identified proteins, which are regulated by nitric oxide, and revealed the structural mechanisms of redox-dependent post-translational modifications. He discovered that the activity of some chromatin modifying enzymes are regulated by nitric oxide. From now on, he got more and more interested in redox-regulation of epigenetic processes, especially in context of stress response and climate change. He wanted to understand how plants adapt to a changing environment, how plant epigenomes respond to different climate conditions over multiple generations, and if the redox system is a key player at the interface between environment and plant epigenomes.

In 2023, Lindermayr joined the Institute of Lung Health and Immunity, where he is now working on the mechanisms and dynamics of innate immune memory, known as trained immunity. Innate immune memory is a type of immune response that occurs in almost all higher organisms. This type of defense response represents a long-term modulation of the immune system in response to a pathogen or other stressors enabling a more effective response to a future attack. Based on his expertise on the plant innate immune system, Christian Lindermayr aims to understand the molecular pathways involved in human trained immunity. Special focus is on the signaling function of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in innate immunity and how these molecules regulate metabolic and epigenetic reprogramming during the training phase.

 Redox-Signaling Nitric Oxide Innate Immune System Trained Immunity Epigenomics Chromatin Modulation Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance