Recognizing Plant Cell first authors: Linhan Sun

Linhan Sun, first author of S-Locus F-Box Proteins Are Solely Responsible for S-RNase-Based Self-Incompatibility of Petunia Pollen

Current Position: Ph.D. candidate in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Plant Biology at The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Education: B.S. in Horticultural Science (July 2015), China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Non-scientific Interests: Basketball, Reading, Running

Brief bio: During my undergraduate study, I did research in Dr. Xiaolan Zhang’s lab on genes of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) involved in fruit development and in sex determination.  Soon after enrolling in the Ph.D. degree program, I did a lab rotation in the lab of Dr. Teh-hui Kao, which has long been studying S-RNase-based self-incompatibility (SI) in Petunia inflata.  I became fascinated by the intricacy and complexity of this self/non-self recognition system operating during sexual reproduction, so I decided to join the lab after completing the lab rotation.  The main focus of my dissertation research is using CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology to ascertain the function of genes, which have previously been found by other approaches to be possibly involved in SI, including the S-locus F-box (SLF) genes studied in this paper and the genes encoding other components of the SLF-containing SCF^SLF complex.