Decipher the transcriptional and translational regulation underlying wound-responsive gene expressions in tomato

Dr. Liu completed her Ph.D. in Academia Sinica in Taiwan, where she studied the contribution of translational control on gene expression for light-mediated plant growth and the signaling transduction mechanisms underlying light-mediated translational control. Dr. Liu then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Shin-Han Shiu at Michigan State University (MSU) where she elucidated the determinants of nucleosome positioning and their influence on plant gene expression and the regulatory divergence controlling wound-responsive gene expression in domesticated and wild tomatoes. Dr. Liu joined the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center in Academia Sinica in Taiwan as an Assistant Research Fellow in 2016. Utilizing diverse disciplines including molecular biology, bioinformatics and computational modeling, research in her lab has focused primarily on deciphering the transcriptional and translational regulatory mechanisms underlying stress-responsive gene expressions and their association with stress tolerance in plants.

Responding to environmental stresses requires the precise regulation of gene expressions, which can be achieved at least by transcriptional and translational controls. Thus, understanding gene expression regulatory mechanisms in stress response and their association with stress tolerance will provide deep insights into stress adaptation in plants. To address this, our lab focuses on how stress responses and its transcriptional regulatory mechanism differ between domesticated and stress-tolerant wild tomato species. I will talk about (1) the molecular differences of cis-regulatory components between domesticated (S. lycopersicum) and wild tomato (S. pennellii) by profiling stress-responsive gene transcriptomes. In addition, another research topic in our lab is to decipher the translational regulatory mechanisms underlying stress-responsive gene expressions in tomato. Employing the ribosome profiling technique, we have globally profiled in vivo translation initiation sites (TISs). I will also talk about our recent findings on alternative TIS mechanisms and their relation with gene expressions.

Liu M.-J., Sugimoto K., Uygun S., Panchy N., Campbell M.S., Yandell M, Howe G.A and Shiu S.-H (2018, Jul). Regulatory Divergence in Wound-Responsive Gene Expression between Domesticated and Wild Tomato. Plant Cell 30, 1445–1460.

Liu M.-J., Wu S.-H., Chen H.-M., and Wu S.-H. (2013, Oct). Translational landscape of photomorphogenic Arabidopsis. Plant Cell, 25, 3699-3710.

This seminar will not be livestreamed or recorded.