Profile

​Head of Core Facility

Mgr. Petr Mokroš, Ph.D.

Phone:  +420 549 49 4537
Email:  petr.mokros@ceitec.muni.cz 
Office : Kamenice 753/5, 625 00 Brno, office A2/123

Main Activity

Plant Sciences Core Facility is an open CEITEC laboratory providing access to the cutting-edge infrastructure for plant and algae cultivation, as well as for environmental simulation and phenotyping analyses. The core facility operates 15 walk-in growth chambers (phytotrons) and 10 greenhouses to provide defined growth conditions for controlled plant cultivation.

In addition, the laboratory can provide in-depth statistical analysis (Machine Learning, Regression analysis, ANOVA, Mixed models, Bayesian analysis) of any kind of plant datasets (phenotypic data, chemical kinetics, fluorescence and chlorophyll data, agricultural data and others) as well as image processing and analysis.

Unique Features

The Core Facility provides academic community with access to advanced environmental simulation technologies. Our facility provides all services necessary for conducting many types of controlled environment experiments, starting from the simplest ones up to the most complex. We are able to control the following parameters: temperature, humidity, light intensity and light quality, day and night length.

In some chambers various light wavelengths are possible to combine: UV-A (365, 385 nm), violet (400 nm), blue (450 nm), green (525 nm), orange (590 nm), red (665 nm) and far-red (730 nm).

Simulation of the following environmental stress conditions is possible to provide: cold stress (≥ +4°C), heat stress (≤ +35°C), drought, alpine light conditions, high light.

We also have chambers where various gas conditions (e.g. ethylene or CO₂) can be adjusted.​

News​

Phenotyping station

The installation of a unique new device – the PlantScreen System - was successfully completed at Plant Sciences Core Facility. PlantScreen System is designed for high-precision low-throughput phenotyping of small and mid-size plants, e.g. Arabidopsis or Brassica. More here.

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Together with Hélène Robert Boisivon group, we contributed two chapters to the new edition of AUXIN SIGNALING, published by the Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. This book is is highly prized in the auxin biology community and is often regarded as  the bible of auxin signalling.  This edition, (eds D. Weijers, K. Ljung, M. Estelle and O. Leyser) has been significantly updated and includes reviews from all major labs. A microscopic image taken by Markéta Pernisová illustrating a shoot apex was chosen as the cover image. 

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Plants CF participated in the filming of a children's series about J.G.Mendel what currently runs on Czech Television: Tajemství pana M.