Recognizing Plant Cell first authors: Byung Ha Lee

Byung Ha Lee, first author of Arabidopsis protein kinase D6PKL3 is involved in formation of distinct plasma-membrane aperture domains on the pollen surface

Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Molecular Genetics and Center for Applied Plant Sciences, The Ohio State University, United States

Education: Ph.D (2012) / M.S. (2008) from the Department of Biology, Kyungpook National University (KNU), South Korea

Non-scientific Interests: Playing with my two kids; spending time with my wife and friends.

Brief bio: During my PhD, I studied GRF-INTERACTING FACTORS in Arabidopsis. These transcriptional co-activators are involved in the control of organ size and regulate multiple developmental processes. After getting my degree, I joined the lab of Dr. Min Ni at the University of Minnesota, where I worked for a year on a light-signaling pathway. In 2014, I moved to the lab of Dr. Anna Dobritsa at the Ohio State University to study pollen development. My research focused on finding and characterizing a new regulator of aperture formation in the Arabidopsis pollen, the protein kinase D6PKL3. Currently, I am trying to figure out the molecular pathways that lead to formation of aperture domains and working on finding additional regulators of this process.