Thea KONGSTED

Postdoc

Group Dolan

Contact

Email: thea.kongsted(at)gmi.oeaw.ac.at

Telephone: +43 1 79044

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9205-3553

FORMER AND CURRENT POSITIONS

since 2024 - Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dolan Group

2024 - PhD at University of Cambridge

2019 - BSc at  University of Edinburgh

Research Projects

Role of transcription factors involved in rhizoid development in the establishment of cell identity in the early development of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha from an isolated spore.

Research interests

I seek to understand the variational properties of plant development over evolutionary time. My focus has been the evolution of distinct cell identities in the epidermal cell layer. In my doctoral research, I discovered that a pattern of reuse of a transcriptional complex observed in flowering plants, namely duplication of one member and co-option of the others, was independently repeated in the liverwort lineage. This has led me down a path of exploring how gene pleiotropy can help us reconstruct the evolution of development.