Research Focus

Plant Virology

Plant viruses cause devastating diseases on plants and threaten our food security. However, besides being pathogen, plant viruses also can be applied as tools for valuable protein expression or gene functional assay in plants. The interests of my lab are mainly focused on studying plant virology and plant-virus interaction for developing antiviral strategies and application of viral vector for genome wide gene functional analysis. Our efforts include collection of economically important plant viruses from field, develop methods for viral disease diagnosis, study virus-plant interactions for antiviral purpose, and establish viral vector(s) for research tools. A multidisciplinary approach including genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry and functional genomics have been established and applied in our laboratory.