Dr. Sonja Kersten

Since 02/2023 Scientific Assistant, Livestock Population Genomics, University of Hohenheim

Research projects: De novo genome assembly of honeybee and bumblebee genomes with long-reads

The advent of long-read sequencing technologies has opened up new horizons in genomics, offering an unprecedented opportunity to discover previously hidden large structural variations (SVs). I focus on the study of SVs underlying adaptive traits in selected populations from different altitudes, as well as the characterisation of the sex locus repeat reach genomic environment.<o:p></o:p>

05/2022 – 02/2023 Bioinformatics Analyst, Computomics GmbH, Tübingen, Germany<o:p></o:p>

2019 – 2022 PhD (Dr. Sc. Agr.), Scholarship of the Landesgraduiertenförderung, Crop Biodiversity and Breeding Informatics, University of Hohenheim<o:p></o:p>

Thesis: Population genomics of herbicide resistance in Alopecurus myosuroides<o:p></o:p>

2014 – 2019 Research Assistant, Max-Planck Institute for Biology, Tübingen, Germany<o:p></o:p>

2011 – 2013 Master of Science, Crop Science, University of Hohenheim

2008 – 2011 Bachelor of Science, Agricultural Sciences, University of Hohenheim

Kersten S, Rabanal FA, Herrmann J, Hess M, Kronenberg ZN, Schmid K, Weigel D. 2023. “Deep haplotype analyses of target-site resistance locus ACCase in blackgrass enabled by pool-based amplicon sequencing.” Plant Biotechnol J. 21(6):1240-1253.

Kersten S, Chang J, Huber CD, Voichek Y, Lanz C, Hagmaier T, Lang P et al. 2023. “Standing Genetic Variation Fuels Rapid Evolution of Herbicide Resistance in Blackgrass.” Proc Natl Acad Sci. 120(16).

Lang PLM, Weiß CL, Kersten S, Latorre SM, Nagel S, Nickel B, Meyer M, Burbano HA. 2020. “Hybridization ddRAD‐sequencing for Population Genomics of Nonmodel Plants Using Highly Degraded Historical Specimen DNA” Molecular Ecology. 20(5):1228-1247.

Regalado J, Lundberg DS, Deusch O, Kersten S, Karasov T, Poersch K, Shirsekar G, Weigel D. 2020. “Combining Whole-Genome Shotgun Sequencing and rRNA Gene Amplicon Analyses to Improve Detection of Microbe–microbe Interaction Networks in Plant Leaves” The ISME Journal. 14(8):2116-2130.

Karasov TL, Neumann M, Duque-Jaramillo A, Kersten S, Bezrukov I, Schröppel B, Symeonidi E, et al. 2020. “The relationship between microbial population size and disease in the Arabidopsis thaliana phyllosphere. ” bioRxiv. doi.org/10.1101/828814.

Karasov TL, Almario J, Friedemann C, Ding W, Giolai M, Heavens D, Kersten S, et al. 2018. “Arabidopsis Thaliana and Pseudomonas Pathogens Exhibit Stable Associations over Evolutionary Timescales.” Cell Host & Microbe 24(1):168-179.e4.