Recognizing Plant Cell authors: June-Sik Kim

June-Sik Kim, co-first author of DREB1A/CBF3 is repressed by transgene-induced DNA methylation in the Arabidopsis ice1-1 mutant

Current Position: Researcher, Gene discovery Researcher Group, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Japan

Education: Ph.D., Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, The University of Tokyo

Non-scientific Interests: gardening & reading, recent favorite is The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Brief bio: I was born and grown in a small town surrounded by green mountains in South Korea. The rich nature aroused my interest in plant biology. As a graduate student in Kazuko Yamaguchi-Shinozaki’s lab at the University of Tokyo, I leaned and studied the responsive gene regulation in plant as the molecular response against environmental stimuli. After Ph. D., my research has extended to genomics and epigenetics with practical bioinformatics skills handling NGS data, aimed to understand the multi-dimensional aspects of gene regulation. These helped a lot in this project to discover the causal gene and to establish the DNA methylation-associated DREB1A/CBF3 regulation. In parallel, I am running research projects to elucidate the plant growth-tolerance tradeoffs based on global transcriptomic balance for plant optimized growth and environmental resilience under ever-changing nature.