Research Interests

Plants benefit from associations with a diverse community of rhizosphere microbes. Specialized plant metabolites are considered a potential mechanism shaping plant-microbiome interactions due to their chemical diversity and antimicrobial properties (Ding et al., Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 2021). I am currently developing a multi-omics-based platform using the model grass Brachypodium distachyon to unravel specialized metabolism in plant-microbiome interactions. This platform includes multi-omics data collection, computational approaches for linking metabolites with pathway genes and phenotypes, high-throughput methods for gene function validation, and techniques to study the biological functions of specialized metabolic pathways in plants. So far, I have collected over 2,000 metabolomics datasets and more than 300 transcriptomics datasets from different tissues of a B. distachyon diversity panel (approximately 110 lines with 4.8 million SNPs available), grown under various conditions. Metabolome-based genome-wide association studies (mGWASs) have been performed, identifying thousands of significant SNPs associated with more than 500 LC-MS/MS features detected in root exudates, roots, and shoots. For example, using this platform, I identified several missing enzymes in the plant dopamine biosynthetic pathway. The biological functions of plant specialized pathways are being investigated using pathway knockout mutants created with CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.

Selected Publications