Boas Pucker

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT BOAS PUCKER

I studied Biochemistry at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and Biology at Bielefeld University. My bachelor thesis is about the flavonoid biosynthesis in sugar beet. From 2014 to 2019, I participated in the synthetic biology competition iGEM as participant, supervisor, and judge. While completing the Master of Science program \'Genome-based Systems Biology\', I shifted from molecular biology to bioinformatics and genomics. My doctoral thesis is about comparative analysis of different Arabidopsis thaliana genomes. I also investigated non-canonical splice sites in the genome sequences of numerous plant species. Parts of this research were performed during a visit in the Brockington group (Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge). In 2019, I received my doctoral degree from the Faculty of Biology at Bielefeld University. I was a member of the Computational Methods for the Analysis of the Diversity and Dynamics of Genomes (DiDy) graduate school and completed PhD programs in Biology and Bioinformatics. I conducted many ONT long read sequencing and plant genome assembly projects at the \'Genetics and Genomics of Plants\' group (Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University) and at the \'Department of Molecular Genetics and Physiology of Plants\'(Ruhr-University Bochum). From 2020 to 2021, I was working as a postdoctoral fellow on the evolution of the betalain biosynthesis supported by a DFG research fellowship. From October 2021 to March 2025, I lead my own research group \'Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics\' as a professor at TU Braunschweig. Since April 2025, we are located at the University of Bonn. Research Interests I am interested in the evolution of specialized metabolism in plants with a particular focus on the betalain and flavonoid biosynthesis in Caryophyllales. I combine molecular biology and bioinformatics approaches including ONT long read sequencing, genome and transcriptome assembly, comparative genomics, gene expression analysis, and mapping-by-sequencing to address evolutionary questions. I am particularly interested how biosynthetic gene clusters are associated with the production of betalains.