Strigolactone Signaling in Arabidopsis Regulates Shoot Development by Targeting D53-Like SMXL Repressor Proteins for Ubiquitination and Degradation
Author Profile
Lei Wang and Bing Wang
Lei Wang
First Author: Wang et al. (2015). Strigolactone signaling in Arabidopsis regulates shoot development by targeting D53-like SMXL repressor proteins for ubiquitination and degradation. Plant Cell tpc.15.00605; Advance Publication November 6, 2015; doi:10.1105/tpc.15.00605.
Current Position: Graduate student, State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics and National Center for Plant Gene Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
Education: M.S in Biology at Hebei Normal University, China, and B.S in Biology at Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology, China.
Non-scientific Interests: Playing football, fishing and watching movies.
By the time I was a senior middle school student, I was already very interested in Biology. After graduating from senior middle school, I chose Biology for my major at Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology in China. In the university I achieved success in courses about Biology and I learned some skills for biological experiments. I began my study for my M.S degree at Hebei Normal University in China and focused on heat stress signal transduction. Then I was lucky to join Prof. Jiayang Li's lab in the State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics for my Ph.D course at 2011. Prof. Jiayang Li has long interest in the biosynthesis and signaling of strigolactones (SLs) and has alot of foward-looking ideas in this field. My research focuses mainly on the SL signaling pathway in Arabidopsis. SLs are a group of newly identified phytohormone, but how SLs regulate gene transcription is still elusive, especially in Arabidopsis. Our work revealed that D53 like SMXL6/7/8 could interact with TPR2 and display tranciptional repression actvity. These results are exciting for SL transcriptional regulation study.
Bing Wang
First Author: Wang et al. (2015). Strigolactone signaling in Arabidopsis regulates shoot development by targeting D53-like SMXL repressor proteins for ubiquitination and degradation. Plant Cell tpc.15.00605; Advance Publication November 6, 2015; doi:10.1105/tpc.15.00605.
Current Position: Research Associate, State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
Education: Ph.D. in Genetics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Non-scientific Interests: Climbing mountains, singing, and cooking.
I was born in Tai'an, China, a city famous for Mount Tai. In my childhood, I often climbed Mount Tai with my twin sister and my father. I was attracted by the natural scenery of the mountain such as sunrise, waterfall, pine trees, flowers, and squirrels. I collected seeds of the wild flowers in the autumn and sowed the seeds in the courtyard in the spring. Observing growth of young plants give me lots of fun. After completing a B.S. study from the Shandong Normal University, I was interested in genetics and plant developmental biology. Fortunately, I got the opptunity to learn from Prof. Jiayang Li and investigated the auxin biosynthetic pathway during my Ph. D studies. Then I worked in Prof. Jiayang Li's lab and further studied the biosynthetic and signaling pathways of auxin and strigolactones (SLs) in Arabidopsis. SLs are a group of newly identified plant hormones that regulate many aspects of plant development. We are interested in the SL signaling pathway in Arabidopsis and found that D53-like SMXLs act with TPR2 to repress transcription. Ubiquitination and degradation of D53-like SMXLs release the repression to induce SL signaling, as described in this report.