About Me

I am a plant molecular biologist who is interested in how an organism senses environmental stimuli and coordinately regulates its autonomous organelles (i.e. chloroplasts) through global transcriptional reprogramming to adapt the changing environment.

I am currently a Ph.D. candidate at Department of Biology at Duke University. My Ph.D. training is advised by Dr. Meng Chen (UC Riverside).

For my Ph.D. research, I identified and characterized a novel red-light signaling component required for chloroplast biogenesis in plant model organism, Arabidopsis. I used multi-disciplinary approaches to dissect its biological function in light signal transduction, subcellular localization, and biochemical property. My results demonstrated that this component (named RCBL) is essential for the red light sensing (which happens in the nucleus) as well as the transcription of plastid-encoded photosynthesis apparatus genes (happens in the chloroplasts). In addition, combining with fluorescent protein tagging and biochemical fractionation, RCBL is dual-targeted in the nucleus and chloroplasts, suggesting RCBL might play separate roles in different cellular compartments. Last but not least, we find that the C-terminal RCBL forms a thioredoxin-like fold, but without reductase activity. Alternatively, this domain is required and sufficient to interact with RCBL's paralog, RCB. This suggests that these two paralogous proteins act coordinately to orchestrate the nuclear and plastidial transcription to promote photomorphogenesis.