The goal of our research is to illucidate the signaling mechanisms that regulate plant growth and environmental responses. Plants have remarkable ability to alter growth and development in response to environmental signals. In fact, this ability is essential for their survival in nature as sessile organisms and is also a major target for breeding high-yield crops. My lab has dissected the signaling networks that integrate hormonal (brassinosteroid, auxin, gibberellin), environmental (light, temperature, pathogens), and nutritional (sugar) signals in regulating plant growth. We use a wide range of approaches including proteomic, genomic, and genetic approaches in Arabidopsis and algae. Our research has focused on the brassinosteroid (BR) signaling pathway, which is the best understood receptor kinase signaling pathway in plants. We have elucidated how this steroid signal is transduced from the receptor kinase BRI1 to the transcription factor BZR1, and how BR crosstalks with other growth hormones, light, temperature, pathogen, and sugar signals in optimizing shoot and root growth. Current focuses of our lab include: (1) How does nutrient signaling through O-linked glycosylation (O-GlcNAc and O-fucose modifications) regulate plant growth? (2) How does sugar-dependent O-glycosylation crosstalk with BR-dependent phosphorylation in regulating transcription, RNA splicing, and translation? (3) How do GSK3 kinase and BSU phosphatase regulate cell division and membrane trafficking? (4) How do receptor kinases maintain cell wall integrity during cell growth and under stress?
Stanford Departments and Centers:
Biology
Person Title:
Associate Professor