Manuel Spannagl | Helmholtz Munich

Prof. Dr. Manuel Spannagl; Environmental Health Center; Plant Genome and Systems Biology; PGSB

Deputy Group Leader

+49 89 3187 3948 manuel.spannagl@helmholtz-munich.de

Building / Room: 3532, 219

"With genomics, we explore and utilize the fascinating diversity within our main food crops with the goal to make them more climate-resilient and healthy."

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Manuel Spannagl is fascinated by the natural diversity contained in plants. His research focuses on the improvement of our main crops, including wheat, barley, rye, hop and oats. Climate change poses a grand challenge for food security and sustainable food production. Exploring and utilizing the natural diversity in crops and their wild relatives is an important route towards climate-resilient and healthy crops. Another main research area is to decode and understand the basis of health related traits such as allergies and nutritional benefits in the genomes of our main food plants.

Manuel Spannagl completed his bioinformatics education at Ludwig-Maximilan-University and Technical University Munich in 2009. After his PhD in computational genomics at Helmholtz Munich in 2015 he became the Deputy head and an independent group leader in the Plant Genome and Systems Biology unit at Helmholtz Munich. In 2024 he was appointed an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Center for Crop and Food Innovation (CCFI), Food Futures Institute, at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

Comparative Genomics Bioinformatics Big Data Climate Change

Since 2024

Since 2015

2015

“Climate change and growing global demand put food security in danger. Plant genomics is a key to sustainable and resilient agriculture.”

Oat field; Plant genomics is a key to sustainable and resilient agriculture.

2023 - Finalist Rising Star in Plant Sciences, Molecular Plant
2018 - Leadership Award, International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium

Gold Star Awards Luxury

Avni, R. ; Kamal, N. ; Bitz, L. ; Jellen, E.N. ; Bekele, W.A. ; Angessa, T.T. ; Auvinen, P. ; Bitz, O. ; Boyle, B. ; Canales, F.J. ; Carlson, C.H. ; Chapman, B. ; Chawla, H. ; Chen, Y. ; Copetti, D. ; Correia de Lemos, S. ; Dang, V.D. ; Eichten, S.R. ; Klos, K.E. ; Fenn, A. ; Fiebig, A. ; Fu, Y.B. ; Gundlach, H. ; Gupta, R. ; Haberer, G. ; He, T. ; Herrmann, M.H. ; Himmelbach, A. ; Howarth, C.J. ; Hu, H. ; Isidro Y Sánchez, J. ; Itaya, A. ; Jannink, J.L. ; Jia, Y. ; Kaur, R. ; Knauft, M. ; Langdon, T. ; Lux, T. ; Marmon, S. ; Marosi, V.B. ; Mayer, K.F.X. ; Michel, S. ; Nandety, R.S. ; Nilsen, K.T. ; Paczos-Grzęda, E. ; Pasha, A. ; Prats, E. ; Provart, N.J. ; Ravagnani, A. ; Reid, R.W. ; Schlueter, J.A. ; Schulman, A.H. ; Sen, T.Z. ; Singh, J. ; Singh, M. ; Sirijovski, N. ; Stein, N. ; Studer, B. ; Viitala, S. ; Vronces, S. ; Walkowiak, S. ; Wang, P. ; Waters, A.J. ; Wight, C.P. ; Yan, W. ; Yao, E. ; Zhang, X.Q. ; Zhou, G. ; Zhou, Z. ; Tinker, N.A. ; Fiedler, J.D. ; Li, C. ; Maughan, P.J. ; Spannagl, M. ; Mascher, M.

A pangenome and pantranscriptome of hexaploid oat

Nadia Kamal, Nikos Tsardakas Renhuldt, Johan Bentzer, Heidrun Gundlach, Georg Haberer, Angéla Juhász, Thomas Lux, Utpal Bose, Jason A. Tye-Din, Daniel Lang, Nico van Gessel, Ralf Reski, Yong-Bi Fu, Peter Spégel, Alf Ceplitis, Axel Himmelbach, Amanda J. Waters, Wubishet A. Bekele, Michelle L. Colgrave, Mats Hansson, Nils Stein, Klaus F. X. Mayer, Eric N. Jellen, Peter J. Maughan, Nicholas A. Tinker, Martin Mascher, Olof Olsson, Manuel Spannagl & Nick Sirijovski

The mosaic oat genome gives insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop

Sean Walkowiak, Liangliang Gao, Cecile Monat, Georg Haberer, Mulualem T. Kassa, Jemima Brinton, Ricardo H. Ramirez-Gonzalez, Markus C. Kolodziej, Emily Delorean, Dinushika Thambugala, Valentyna Klymiuk, Brook Byrns, Heidrun Gundlach, Venkat Bandi, Jorge Nunez Siri, Kirby Nilsen, Catharine Aquino, Axel Himmelbach, Dario Copetti, Tomohiro Ban, Luca Venturini, Michael Bevan, Bernardo Clavijo, Dal-Hoe Koo, Jennifer Ens, Krystalee Wiebe, Amidou N’Diaye, Allen K. Fritz, Carl Gutwin, Anne Fiebig, Christine Fosker, Bin Xiao Fu, Gonzalo Garcia Accinelli, Keith A. Gardner, Nick Fradgley, Juan Gutierrez-Gonzalez, Gwyneth Halstead-Nussloch, Masaomi Hatakeyama, Chu Shin Koh, Jasline Deek, Alejandro C. Costamagna, Pierre Fobert, Darren Heavens, Hiroyuki Kanamori, Kanako Kawaura, Fuminori Kobayashi, Ksenia Krasileva, Tony Kuo, Neil McKenzie, Kazuki Murata, Yusuke Nabeka, Timothy Paape, Sudharsan Padmarasu, Lawrence Percival-Alwyn, Sateesh Kagale, Uwe Scholz, Jun Sese, Philomin Juliana, Ravi Singh, Rie Shimizu-Inatsugi, David Swarbreck, James Cockram, Hikmet Budak, Toshiaki Tameshige, Tsuyoshi Tanaka, Hiroyuki Tsuji, Jonathan Wright, Jianzhong Wu, Burkhard Steuernagel, Ian Small, Sylvie Cloutier, Gabriel Keeble-Gagnère, Gary Muehlbauer, Josquin Tibbets, Shuhei Nasuda, Joanna Melonek, Pierre J. Hucl, Andrew G. Sharpe, Matthew Clark, Erik Legg, Arvind Bharti, Peter Langridge, Anthony Hall, Cristobal Uauy, Martin Mascher, Simon G. Krattinger, Hirokazu Handa, Kentaro K. Shimizu, Assaf Distelfeld, Ken Chalmers, Beat Keller, Klaus F. X. Mayer, Jesse Poland, Nils Stein, Curt A. McCartney, Manuel Spannagl, Thomas Wicker & Curtis J. Pozniak

Multiple wheat genomes reveal global variation in modern breeding

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Transcript: Manuel Spannagl: Unlocking Wheat Genomes to Fight Climate Change | Horizons 2019

Manuel Spannagl is fascinated by the possibilities that genomics offers for developing solutions to societal challenges. By using new sequencing and genome-assembly technologies, Manuel’s work explores the natural genetic diversity of wheat and cereal varieties grown across the globe. His research involves describing the genes and mechanisms related to wheat insensitivities and resistances, as well as creating and introducing the genomic resources for adapting our main crops to the challenges associated with climate change.