Samuel Nestor Meckoni

SNM in lab

Email    PGP-Key

ORCID: 0000-0003-4877-8762

Mastodon: @samnm@mstdn.science

Hereafter some of my current working topics.

Ceratophyllum submersum

A Ceratophyllum submersum plant is laying in a green plastic tray. The plant is circa 60 cm long and branched. Next to this picture is another one. There are shoot tips of the plant. The small long leaves that emerge from the stem are visible.

C. submersum is an aquatic plant capable of living in eutrophic ponds. Eutrophy means here the presence of many nutrients in such ponds. This is often an environmental problem caused by too much fertilization in agriculture. C. submersum could help to solve this problem. During our research work we already sequenced the C. submersum chloroplast genome. If you want to know more about the problems of eutrophy, I suggest this website (German only):

Umweltbundesamt

Carnivorous plants

There are many different carnivorous plants. Their diversity ist making them special regarding metabolism, morphology and compounds. Hereafter we will have a closer look at the so called bladderworts (Utricularia).

Utricularia

Plants from this genus can live under water, on land or on other plants but always in moist environments. Their special bladder shaped traps suck their prey in. Therefore a negative pressure is generated inside the traps. In the next step the ‘trap door’ opens and closes again. Meanwhile the surrounding water, inclusive the prey, is sucked in. The door movement is seen as the fastest movement in the plant kingdom. At the top of the picture is U. gibba and at the bottom U. australis.

Hereafter two links and an embedded video with exciting contents (German, with English subtitles).