Sheng Luan is the Chancellor's Professor and Chair of the Department of Plant & Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD in Cellular and Developmental Biology from Harvard University. His current research looks at calcium signalling mechanisms in plants. He has published more than 150 research and review articles in premier journals including Annual Review of Plant Biology, Trends in Plant Sciences, PNAS, Nature and Science Signaling, among many others. Prof Luan received numerous awards including the Charles Albert Shull Award and the Alexander von Humboldt Prize. He is a Fellow of AAAS and a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists. Prof Luan is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Plant, a leading plant biology journal published by Cell Press.
Sunday session 2
Regulation of nutrient homeostasis by a calcium signalling network
Plants are growing in a nutrient-poor environment in nature. Agricultural production is heavily relying on the application of chemical fertilizers, imposing a serious economic and environmental problem worldwide. One solution would be to breed crops that can tolerate low-nutrient soils to reduce the reliance on fertilizers. Work in Luan laboratory identified a CBL-CIPK signaling pathway that regulates the activity of a voltage-gated potassium channel involved in K-uptake in plant roots and another CBL-CIPK pathway for vacuolar K remobilization. Manipulation of CBL-CIPK network can potentially enhance the growth of plants under low-K soils, supporting sustainable agriculture and environment. The CBL-CIPK network has become a major signaling mechanism for the regulation of mineral nutrition by targeting transporters in various subcellular locations.