Recognizing The Plant Cell first authors: Jieyu Liu

Jieyu Liu, first author of A Remote cis-Regulatory Region Is Required for NIN Expression in the Pericycle to Initiate Nodule Primordium Formation in Medicago truncatula

Current Position: Ph.D candidate, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Department of Plant Sciences, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

Education: Ph.D, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Department of Plant Sciences, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. M.Sc. State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas, College of Agronomy, Northwest A&F University (NWAFU), China. B.Sc. Tianjin-Bristol Research Center for the Effects of Environment Changes on Crops, College of Agronomy, Tianjin Agricultural University (TJAU), Tianjin, China.

Non-scientific Interests: Reading novels, Watching Movies

Brief bio: Motivated by understanding the molecular mechanism of legume-rhizobia symbiosis and potential for future engineering in non-nodulating host, I came to Prof. Dr. Ton Bisseling’s Lab. Here I mainly work on a key transcription factor: NODULE INCEPTION (NIN). NIN is involved in all main processes during nodule initiation, but the functional promoter regions required for full complementation of nin knockout mutants was a mystery for last 20 years. This is also the main question we solved in our paper entitled: A Remote cis-Regulatory Region Is Required for NIN Expression in the Pericycle to Initiate Nodule Primordium Formation in Medicago truncatula. Identification of functional NIN promoter will not only facilitate the study on understanding the role of NIN in nodulation, also essential for future engineering in non-nodulating plants, as loss of NIN shows best correlation (until now known) with the absence of nodules. I feel it is my pleasure to work on this interesting and promising field with a group of wonderful people.