Hung-Chi Liu: Plant Physiology First Author

Hung-Chi Liu, first author of “Cytosolic Phosphoglucose Isomerase Is Essential for Microsporogenesis and Embryogenesis in Arabidopsis”

Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher, Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Education:

PhD from School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences (now School of Molecular Sciences), University of Western Australia.

MSc and BSc in Botany, National Taiwan University.

Non-scientific Interests: Music and binge-watching

Brief bio:

When doing my postdoc training in Dr. Jychian Chen’s lab at IMB, Academia Sinica, I participated in a project to investigate why knocking down cPGI (cytosolic phosphoglucose isomerase, a well-known glycolytic enzyme) would result in starch over-accumulation in Arabidopsis leaves. At that time, similar results were published ahead in Plant Physiology by another research group on the other side of the earth. Even so, intriguing male infertility found in some of our cPGI-knockdown lines led me to further investigate the role of cPGI in pollen development under the supervision of Dr. Der-Fen Suen in Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica. The task is finally completed by providing additional evidence of obtaining successfully for the first time the cpgi knockout mutants, which were previously thought as nonviable. Our data suggest that cPGI plays an indispensable role in Arabidopsis reproduction.