| Mitosis | Cytokinesis | Embryo Development |
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The question I am trying to answer in my research is how a single-cell zygote (fertilized egg) develops to a multi-cellular embryo with different organs and tissues, through cell division. With such an initiative, I had developed a proembryo culture system for Brassica juncea (Liu et al, Plant Journal, 1993), and used this system to study the function of auxin transport in embryo pattern formation. What I found is that auxin polar transport is essential for the plant embryo to establish a bilateral symmetry (Liu et al, Plant Cell, 1993, with cover picture).
Moved to the John Innes Centre to earn my PhD, I studied embryo development in pea. I found the first cytokinesis-defective mutant in plants (Liu et al, Developmental Genetics, 1996), together with several single cotyledon mutants. Molecular and cell biological techniques have been applied to characterize these mutants.
Working in David Meinke's Laboratory at the Oklahoma State University, I focus my reresearch on plant cell division, searching for mitosis mutants using the most frequently used model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. My hypothesis is that mitosis is an essential process of plant development, and mutation of such genes should be embryo-lethal. After 8 months of cell biological screening of a large number of mutants in the Meinke collection, 3 mutants (called titan) fall into this category. They were mapped to different chromosomes . The common feature of the titan mutants is the greatly enlarged endosperm nuclei. Mitotic division of titan1 and titan2 was arrested at the prophase stage. Detail description of these titan mutants was published in The Plant Journal recently. At the moment, I am working on the molecular cloning of these TITAN genes. Hopefully by the time these genes are cloned we will know more about the cell cycle, one of the most important events of the cell.
Now I am a group leader and senior scientist at the Plant Reearch International, Wageningen University & Research Center. My group is using state-of-the-art molecular genetic tools including proteomic techniques to discover genes with important functions and to exploit their potential applications in agriculture. Rice and Arabidopsis are
used routinely in the lab for such research.
Recent Publications
Book and Book Chapters
