Wenhan Cao: Plant Physiology First Author

Wenhan Cao, first author of “Correlation of Vacuole Morphology with Stomatal Lineage Development by Whole-Cell Electron Tomography”

Current Position: Research Associate at School of Life Sciences, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Education: Ph.D. in Cell & Molecular Biology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong; M.S. and B.S from Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

Non-scientific Interests: Movies, history and culture, geocaching, being with families and friends,

Brief bio: My interest in plant biology began in my undergraduate life at Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China. There specialized plant biology course inspired me with how plants responded and adapted to the external stimuli. Thus, I started my M.S. project in Dr. Shengcheng Han’s lab and explored the calcium signaling in plant cells. During my M.S.,  I was fascinated by the plant cell microscopy, so I decided to join Dr. Liwen Jiang’s lab at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China). During my Ph.D. career, Dr. Jiang had established a powerful electron tomography (ET) platform and facilitate the generation of the first whole-cell ET models of vacuole in Arabidopsis root cells. Since vacuoles play pivotal roles in stomatal movement, we wondered how mature guard cells raise their central vacuoles. We focused on four development stages of stomatal lineage cell and built a whole-cell ET model for each of them. Our studies may shed light on the future studies on the underlying mechanisms of stomatal movement and organelle biogenesis.

姓名：曹文瀚

当前职位：香港中文大学生命科学学院副研究员

学历：香港中文大学，细胞分子生物学博士；北京师范大学，硕士及学士

兴趣爱好：电影，学习历史和文化，探险，陪伴家人和好友

个人简介：我对植物生物学的兴趣始于我在北京师范大学的本科阶段。植物生物学课程启发了我，开始对植物如何响应和适应外界环境而好奇。此后我开始在韩生成教授实验室攻读硕士学位，旨在揭示植物细胞中特定的钙信号通路。期间我开始对植物细胞的显微观察感兴趣，所以我决定加入香港中文大学姜里文教授的实验室。在攻读博士学位期间，姜教授组建了电子断层扫描（ET）平台，并以此为依托发表了拟南芥中第一个全细胞液泡ET模型，揭示了植物细胞中液泡的发生机制。出于液泡在气孔运动中起到的关键性作用，我们想进一步了解成熟的保卫细胞中中央液泡是如何形成的。我们集中研究了气孔谱系细胞发育的四个阶段，并为每个阶段构建了全细胞ET模型。我们的研究可能为未来的气孔运动的机制和细胞器的生物学发生研究提供佐证和启示。