Research
My laboratory is interested in understanding the mechanisms of plant meiosis, especially the regulatory mechanisms of gene expression during chromosome pairing, synapsis and recombination, and the transitions between gametophytic and sporophytic development in the plant life cycle.

Meiotic homologous recombination is the main source of genetic variation and the theoretic fundamental for plant breeding. The process of meiosis reduces the number of chromosomes in reproductive cells from diploid to haploid, and leads to the production of microspores and megaspores in plants. Flowering plants are excellent models to study meiosis, because the formation of male and female gametophytes differs from each other. The double fertilization and the formation of endosperm in plants further assure the normal vegetative development of homozygous meiotic mutants, which become embryo lethal in mammalians. The diversity of reproductive mechanisms is far greater in plants, including systems of self-fertilization, which are rarely found in animals, and hermaphroditism on a much more extensive scale. In addition, individual anthers from flowering plants bear highly synchronized meiocytes that usually form cell clusters (informally called “worm”) during meiosis I and make them easy to be isolated and studied.

Our goals are to understand: 1) the features of gene expression during meiosis and its correlation to the distribution of homologous recombination events; 2) the regulatory mechanisms of gene expression during plant meiosis entry, process, and exit; 3) the impact of environmental factors on meiotic recombination; and 4) alterations of plant growth and development by chromosome rearrangement. The plants we use in our studies include Arabidopsis, maize, rice, tomato, and potato.