My lab studies the molecular mechanisms of plant immunity and pathogen virulence, with an overall goal to develop effective and environmentally friendly strategies to control plant diseases and to ensure sufficient food production.
Our research projects include:
Small RNAs and Cross-Kingdom RNAi in Plant - Pathogen Interactionsfigure 1
Small RNAs, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), are important regulators of eukaryotic gene expression by guiding mRNA cleavage, translational inhibition or chromatin modification. We utilize genomics, genetics, molecular and biochemical approaches to identify and functionally characterize infection-regulated small RNAs, including those from plant hosts and from eukaryotic pathogens. My lab provided the first example of a plant endogenous siRNA that regulates plant immune responses. We further discovered that some small RNAs from aggressive fungal pathogens are delivered into host cells to hijack host RNAi machinery to suppress host immunity genes. These studies have added small RNAs to the list of pathogen effectors, which unveiled a novel virulence mechanism in aggressive eukaryotic pathogens. The transport of small RNAs from fungal pathogens to plant hosts also represents a naturally occurring cross-kingdom RNAi event. We recently show that such cross-kingdom RNAi is bi-directional, plants are also capable of delivery small RNAs into fungal pathogens to attenuate their virulence.