Prof. Dr. Aurélien Tellier
Academic Career and Research Areas
Professor Tellier’s (b. 1979) area of research explores the evolutionary mechanisms of plant adaptation to their environment, taking into consideration aspects such as different climatic conditions and resistance against parasites (bacteria, fungi, insects). The primary focus of his research is the study of plant-parasite coevolution and long-term seed dormancy in the soil in wild tomato species endemic to South America. He develops population genetics theoretical models to comprehend genome evolution at the population or species level. He also focuses on empirical plant evolutionary genetics, using DNA sequences and laboratory experiments to characterize the genes involved in these adaptations.
Professor Tellier studied agronomy, plant biology, genetics and statistics at ENITA (Bordeaux, France) and population genetics at INAPG (Paris, France). After having obtained his doctorate at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK) in 2007, he spent five years as a postdoctoral research fellow at LMU Munich supported by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation and the German Research Foundation, DFG. In 2012, he assumed the position of associate professor of population genetics at TUM.
Key Publications
Tellier A, Laurent SJY, Lainer H, Pavlidis P, Stephan W: “Inference of Seed Bank Parameters in Two Wild Tomato Species Using Ecological and Genetic Data”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 2011; 108(41): 17052-17057.
AbstractBrown JKM,Tellier A, “Plant-Parasite Coevolution: Bridging the Gap between Genetics and Ecology”. Annual Review of Phytopathology. 2011; 49: 345-367.
AbstractTellier A, Fisher I, Merino C, Xia H, Camus-Kulandaivelu L, Städler T, Stephan W:
“Fitness effect of derived deleterious mutations in four closely related wild tomato species with spatial structure”. Heredity. 2011; 107: 189-199.
Tellier A. and Brown J.K.M., “The influence of Perenniality and Seed Banks on Polymorphism in Gene-for-Gene Interactions”. The American Naturalist. 2009; 174(6): 769-779.
AbstractTellier A. and Brown J.K.M., “Genetic polymorphism in Host-Parasite Interactions”,
Proceedings of the Royal Society Lond. Ser. B: Biol. Sci. 2007; 274(1611): 809-817