Principal Investigator
Researcher
Email:jmgong@sibs.ac.cn
Personal Web:

National Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics

Work experience 

2005.12-present. CAS center for Excellence in molecular plant sciences/ Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology, Principle Investigator 

2000.9-2005.9.  University of California San Diego, Postdoctoral Research associate   

Education 

1995.9-2000.7   Institute of Genetics CAS, PhD 

1991.9-1995.7   Beijing Normal University, Biology 

The fast growing population poses an increasing burden to natural resources and the environment. Plants are primary producers in the food chain. Uptake and allocation of mineral nutrients and toxic elements in plants determine plant growth, yield and food quality. Over the past decades, doubling of agricultural production worldwide has been associated with a 7-fold increase in the use of nitrogen (N) fertilizers, which to some extent addressed the food security concern, though resulted in an increasing economic burden to farmers and more importantly a severe ecological consequence, including eutrophication and heavy metal pollution. 

Increasing nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) has been proposed to tackle these challenges. NUE can be divided into two processes: uptake efficiency and utilization efficiency, and plant life cycle correspondingly is divided into vegetative and N remobilization phase. In vegetative phase, young developing tissues behave as sink organs for the assimilation of inorganic N taken up before flowering. N remobilization stage starts generally after flowering, where shoots and/or roots start to behave as source organs to export nitrogen to reproductive and storage organs. In Arabidopsis, more than 90% nitrogen in senescence leaves is subject to remobilization. N remobilization also occurs when exposed to environmental stresses and was proposed as a nutrient safeguard strategy. These observations suggest that N remobilization represents an important NUE mechanism evolved. 

Heavy metal pollution affects both yield and quality of agricultural food production. An affordable solution to this problem could be breeding remediation-crops serving dual roles in both phytoremediation and reducing metal accumulation in food chains, while both require a better understanding of metal transport, allocation and detoxification in plants. Thus further study using both model plant and hyperaccumulators could greatly contribute to either phytoremediation of heavy metals or reducing metal accumulation in food chains. 

Based on these observations, our lab focuses on the molecular mechanisms of mineral transport and distribution in plants, and its interaction with abiotic stresses. Specifically, we are interested in (1) nitrogen use efficiency (NUE): SINAR (Stress-initiated nitrate allocation to roots) represents an ideal physiological process to study the interaction between nitrogen and carbon assimilation exposed to changing environment. We have been working on this process for years and made significant progress.  (2) Cadmium accumulation and detoxification: Cadmium is a nonessential toxic element derived from modern industry and fertilization. Answers to how cadmium enters and accumulates in plant harvestable parts would greatly facilitate phytoremediation. The resulted knowledge could also be applied to breeding remediation -crops.  

Our research will contribute to (1) the basic theory of mineral uptake, allocation, turnover and subsequent remobilization in plants, (2) nutrient use efficiency (NUE) that helps to reduce fertilizer use and pollution, (3) phytoremediation of elemental pollutants. The research will consequently contribute to a sustainable agriculture.