Sara WIGHARD

Sara WIGHARD

Postdoc
Research Burga

+43 1 79044
sara.wighard(at)imba.oeaw.ac.at

Funding

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (2025)

EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship (2025)

Former and Current Positions

since 2024 - Postdoctoral researcher in the Burga Lab.

2023 - Postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

2018-2023 - Doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) in Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biology, Tübingen, Germany

2015-2017 - MSc in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

2014 - BSc (Honours) in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

2010-2013 - BSc in Biology: Majoring in ‘Genetics’ and ‘Ecology & Evolution’ at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Wighard S, Sommer RJ. (2024). The Role of Epigenetic Switches in Polyphenism Control: Implications from a Nematode Model for the Developmental Regulation of Alternative Phenotypes. Biology 13:922. doi.org/10.3390/biology13110922

Rödelsperger C, Röseler W, Athanasouli M, Wighard S, Herrmann M, Sommer RJ. (2024). Genome Assembly of the Nematode Rhabditoides Inermis From a Complex Microbial Community. Genome Biology and Evolution 16:evae230. doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evae230

Wighard S, Witte H, Sommer RJ. (2024). Functional divergence of conserved developmental plasticity genes between two distantly related nematodes. bioRxiv:doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.29.610235

Wighard S, Witte H, Sommer RJ. (2024). Conserved switch genes that arose via whole-genome duplication regulate a cannibalistic nematode morph. Science Advances 10:eadk6062. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adk6062

Wighard S, Athanasouli M, Witte H, Rödelsperger C, Sommer RJ. (2022). A New Hope: A Hermaphroditic Nematode Enables Analysis of a Recent Whole Genome Duplication Event. Genome Biology and Evolution 14(12):1–18. doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac169

Theska T, Sieriebriennikov B, Wighard S, Werner MS, Sommer RJ. (2020) Geometric morphometrics of microscopic animals as exemplified by model nematodes. Nature Protocols 15, 2611–2644. doi.org/10.1038/s41596-020-0347-z

Rödelsperger C, Athanasouli M, Lenuzzi M, Theska T, Sun S, Dardiry M, Wighard S, Hu W, Sharma DR, Han Z. (2019) Crowdsourcing and the feasibility of manual gene annotation: A pilot study in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus. Scientific Reports 9, 18789. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55359-5

Veenstra A, Moola N, Wighard S, Korsman J, Christensen SA, Rafudeen MS, Murray SL (2019). Kauralexins and zealexins accumulate in sub-tropical maize lines and play a role in seedling resistance to Fusarium verticillioides. European Journal of Plant Pathology, 153:223 - 237. doi.org/10.1007/s10658-018-1557-x

Christie N, Myburg AA, Joubert F, Murray SL, Carstens M, Lin Y-C, Meyer J, Crampton BG, Christensen SA, Ntuli JF, Wighard S, Van de Peer Y and Berger DK. (2017). Systems genetics reveals a transcriptional network associated with susceptibility in the maize–grey leaf spot pathosystem. The Plant Journal, 89: 746–763. doi.org/10.1111/tpj.13419

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Alejandro Burga

Sara WIGHARD

Sara WIGHARD

Funding

Former and Current Positions

Contact

Vienna BioCenter

Links