Recognizing Plant Cell authors: Hyoujin Kim

Hyoujin Kim, co-first author of SHORTROOT-Mediated Intercellular Signals Coordinate Phloem Development in Arabidopsis Roots

Current Position:  combined Masters and Doctoral course student, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea

Education: B.Sc. Genetic engineering, University of Kyung-Hee, Republic of Korea

Non-scientific Interests: exercising, movies, music

Brief Bio: When I was an undergraduate student at Kyung-Hee University, I took a Plant Developmental Genetics course. I was very interested in learning how plants develop. After graduation, I joined Professor Ji-Young Lee’s lab at National University as combined Masters and Doctoral course. I have been studying gene regulatory mechanisms of phloem development in Arabidopsis roots. Phloem sieve elements, protophloem and metaphloem, develop via two steps of asymmetric cell divisions. Following up Jing’s finding that SHORTROOT is involved in asymmetric cell divisions in the phloem development and that NARS1 (NAC-REGULATED SEED MORPHOLOGY 1; ANAC056; AT3G15510) and SND2 (SECONDARY WALL-ASSOCIATED NAC DOMAIN PROTEIN 2; ANAC073; AT4G28500), two NAC domain transcription factors, might be downstream of SHORTROOT, I further characterized this pathway and found that it operates through an elaborate positive feedforward loop. In this, NARS1 is a key player of an asymmetric cell division of phloem precursor. My next research aims to further understand how NARS1 regulates the asymmetric cell divisions of phloem sieve element precursors potentially as a long-distance signal. I look forward to expanding my understanding in plant development during my remaining graduate study and then jumping in a broader field in plant biology after graduation.