Ursula Lütz-Meindl (1956–2020): a devoted plant cell biologist

Ursula Lütz-Meindl (Fig. 1) was born on March 12, 1956, in Linz, Austria, where she attended high school. Her academic career started in 1980 with a PhD supervised by Oswald Kiermayer, Professor at the former Institute of Plant Physiology at the University of Salzburg, Austria. She received her venia docendi (Habilitation) in 1987 and was awarded 1988 the “Christian Doppler Price” for outstanding achievements in biosciences from the Federal Government of Salzburg. She was promoted to an Associate Professor in 1997 at the University of Salzburg. Several research stays took her to the University of Canberra, Australia, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, where she established long-term research cooperation, for example, with Peter K. Hepler, Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.

Fig. 1

Ursula Lütz-Meindl (Photo C. Lütz)

Ursula Lütz-Meindl was a devoted scientist, and her main research object was the unicellular green alga Micrasterias denticulata. Back then, this alga might have appeared as some sort of curiosity with its beautiful, highly ornamented cell shape. Now it became clear that Zygnematophyceae (where Desmids belong to) are the closest sister to land plants, and therefore, the research on this model organism is highly important. Lütz-Meindl was a plant cell biologist in the best sense of the word, investigating many different cell biological aspects of (1) growth and cell shape formation as well as (2) stress responses and adaptation in this unique system. In the first aspect, cell wall development was a central question, and the function of Golgi bodies was investigated by immuno-TEM, TEM-coupled electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). The results on cell wall composition and transition are classical. But unlike other researchers, Ursula Lütz-Meindl never got stuck with one topic but investigated the involvement of cytoskeleton elements, ionic regulation, and signal transduction to answer the complicated interplay between these factors for the highly ornamented cell shape in Micrasterias as summarized in a review article (Meindl, 1993, Microbiol. Rev. 57, 415–433). For the second aspect, also a broad range of research questions was asked and answered. How does Micrasterias cope with different temperatures, UV irradiation, oxidative stress, or high salinity? Her works on salinity stress and programmed cell death (PCD) are highly cited and showed for the first time that this key element in higher plant development is also evident in a unicellular organism that is theoretically immortal. Another branch of research was the heavy metal impact on Micrasterias, where the elements zinc, copper, aluminum, cadmium, chromium, and lead were tested, and astonishingly different mechanisms of the cells to deal with these stressors were detected. The reader is referred to a comprehensive summary (Lütz-Meindl, 2016, Front. Plant Sci. 7:999 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2016.00999). Ursula Lütz-Meindl had an outstanding knowledge in all aspects of ultrastructural research, from classical transmission electron microscopy to advanced 3-D visualization methods like tomography and FIB-SEM. Particularly in her later works, e.g., in cooperation with Prof. Gerhard Wanner, Munich University, astonishing 3-D images of organelles and their interactions became available. She had many collaborations with national and international colleagues on questions solvable only by the high resolution of transmission electron microscopy.

Ursula Lütz-Meindl was a superb academic teacher, sharing her knowledge and passion for plant cell biology with numerous master students and supervised ten PhD students. As strict as she was in judging the scientific results, so generous and supportive she was to her colleagues and co-workers in her small but highly motivated research group. There was always an open door, and she would discuss scientific results until late night. We learned a lot from her, and she became a true friend to many of us. In her private life, she was married since 1997 to Prof. Dr. Cornelius Lütz, former head of the Department of Botany at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. They shared their passion for nature and traveling as well as scientific interests and published numerous papers together.

Ursula Lütz-Meindl had a long-standing connection to Protoplasma. It was in this journal where she published her first scientific results in 1980 and continued throughout her career; more than 20 publications of Ursula Lütz-Meindl appeared in Protoplasma. But not only as an author, also as Guest Editor, she contributed to a special issue on Oswald Kiermayer in 1990 (Protoplasma 157, 1–2), who was a co-editor (and later editor-in-chief) of Protoplasma from 1973 to 1986. She was a Guest Editor in a special issue on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Walter Url, Prof. Emeritus in 2000 (Protoplasma 212), and of a special issue in Protoplasma (246, 1–2) on the Microscopy Conference (MC 2009 Graz, joint meeting of Dreiländertagung & Multinational Congress on Microscopy). She co-organized and organized several national and international scientific meetings, e.g., the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS, England) Meeting 2007, which took place in Salzburg, Austria.

On May 14, 2020 Ursula Lütz-Meindl passed away in Salzburg, Austria, after severe illness that she took without complaining. All that have worked with her will miss her, but her spirit to look for scientific truth will live on!