Assistant Research Fellow/Professor Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center/Academia Sinica, Taiwan Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)
Body of Abstract: Nitrate is the critical element affects the plant development and crop yields. To study how plants absorb and assimilate nitrogen, my lab has focused on i) developing sensors for non-invasive, real-time monitoring of nitrate acquisition in plant roots. ii) identifying novel transporters of nitrogen and their mechanisms of environmental challenges. Recently, we successfully engineered a novel nitrate biosensor, NitraMeter3.0 (NiMet3.0), the genetically encoded GFP-based reversible biosensor for the quantitative in vivo visualization of nitrate distribution. NiMet3.0 contains a nitrate sensing (NIT) domain and is highly specific to nitrate. Moreover, Arabidopsis thaliana plants expressing a nuclear-localized NiMet3.0 reported nitrate at the cellular level, and this sensor enables direct monitoring of the rapid uptake and clearance of nitrate by individual cells and within cell compartments in planta. Furthermore, our newest discoveries about the nitrate dynamics and the key role of nitrate in plant root growth and development will be address as well as the new nitrate transporter, NPF1.3, which is highly expressed in endodermis cells in planta by extending the concept of transport activity sensor of NiTrac to the NPF family in Arabidopsis.