Jiawei Wang, PhDDistinguished Adjunct Professor from CAS

Our work is based on the previous findings that miR156, one the most evolutionarily conserved plant microRNAs (miRNAs), is the key regulator for plant developmental timing. miR156 accumulates at a high level in seedlings and subsequently declines as plants age. This temporal expression pattern serves as an intrinsic timer for developmental transitions. Therefore, at individual level, dissection of the molecular mechanism by which miR156 senses plant age (the upstream events) and by which miR156 and its target SPL transcription factors regulate morphological and physiological changes (the downstream events) will help us to understand of the general principle underlying the irreversibility of life cycle in multicellular organisms.

At the interspecies level, we are using Arabidopsis close relatives (eg. Cardamine and Arabis) as perennial models to understand how the life cycle strategy of higher plants is diversified and how the perennial-to-annual growth habit is evolved.