Introduction

　　Quan Wang, Principal Investigator. He has been honored as “Young Talents of CAAS” and “Shenzhen Overseas Senior Talents”. Dr Wang’s research focuses on plant development biology. And he has published several papers on Plant Cell, New Phytologist, Plant Journal and so on.

　　Research Interest

　　Leaf is an important plant organ, it is the place for plant photo-synthesis. And leaf is also the heat source, carbon source and it can feed oxygen, water to atmosphere. Our lab studies the mechanism of leaf development, especially leaf polarity establishment in rice. Through different methods, like histology, live imaging and transcriptome analysis, we would like to find out key genes for leaf polarity establishment and characterize function of these genes.  And we try to build up a genetic regulation network and understand molecular mechanism. Through the study of leaf development, it can shed more light on plant morphogenesis theory and also provide important genetic resources for breeding.

　　Major Achievements

　　Leaves are initiated from the flank of shoot apical meristem. As they grow, three axes are established: Proximal-distal axis, Adaxial-abaxial axis, Medio-Lateral axis. Rice leaf flatten process depends on these axes: Proximal-distal axis determines leaf sheath and leaf blade development, adaxial-abaxial axis regulates leaf rolling level, and medio-lateral axis modulates leaf width.

　　We identified a leaf defect mutant and named narrow leaf1, which has significantly narrower leaf compared to wild type (Figure 1). Map-based cloning and complementation experiments suggested that narrow leaf defects was caused by a mutation of an auxin biosynthesis gene OsTAR1/FISHBONE, indicating that auxin plays an important role in rice leaf medio-lateral axis establishment. As auxin and cytokinin usually perform the function antagonistically, we will try to investigate the function of both hormones in rice leaf medio-lateral axis establishment.  

　　Selected Publication

　　1. Wang Q, Rossmann S, Hasson A and Theres K (2015): Divide et impera: boundaries shape the plant body and initiate new meristems. New Phytologist. DOI: 10.1111/nph.13641;

　　2. Wang Q, Kohlen W, Rossmann S, Vernoux T and Theres K (2014): Auxin Depletion from the Leaf Axil Conditions Competence for Axillary Meristem Formation in Arabidopsis and Tomato. Plant Cell. 26(5):2068-2079

　　3. Yang F#, Wang Q#, Schmitz G, Müller D and Theres K (2012) The bHLH protein ROX acts in concert with RAX1 and LAS to modulate axillary meristem formation in Arabidopsis. Plant Journal. 71:61-70 #同等贡献

　　4. Shi B*, Zhang C*, Tian C, Wang J, Wang Q, Xu T, Xu Y, Ohno C, Sablowski R, Heisler M G, Theres K, Wang Y and Jiao Y. (2016) Two-step regulation of a meristematic cell population acting in shoot branching in Arabidopsis. PLoS Genet. 12: e1006168