Research
"We bring molecular biology and analytical chemistry into ecology to understand the ecological function of genes in plants."
Research Topics
I. Flower-Pollinator Interactions
Flowers have evolved several traits to attract their pollinators, such as many insects and birds. The goal of this project is to unravel the ecological performance of floral traits in nature by measuring phenotypic differences between wild-type plants and mutant lines. We are conducting integrated kinetic analyses of plants' transcriptomes, metabolomes, and phenomes with a high degree of resolution in flowers (Moonyoung Kang, Yuri Choi, Hyeonjin Kim, Eunae Park, Hangah Lim, Minsoo Choi).
II. Plant Metabolite Biosynthesis & Single-Cell RNA Sequencing
Plants produce thousands of secondary metabolites. To understand the origin and diversification of secondary metabolites, the identification of biosynthetic genes is crucial. The goal of this project is to identify the whole biosynthetic pathway of plant metabolites using single-cell RNA sequencing (Moonyoung Kang, Hyeonjin Kim, Eunae Park, Taein Kim).
III. Plant-Herbivore Interactions
Many insect herbivores attack crops in the field, causing serious damage to human agriculture system. To build a more sustainable agriculture system, we should know more about plant-insect interactions; how insects find their host plants in nature (Junyong Song), how plants defend themselves against herbivore attacks (Gisuk Lee, Sungjun Choung, Jongbu Lim, Minsoo Choi), and how crops lost their defensive weapons during breeding.
IV. Plant Genome Editing
The genome editing tools enable us to study the gene function of non-model organisms. The goal of this project is to develop a simple and efficient platform for plant genome editing.