Aridland Agriculture Department Invites an American Scientists in Biotechnology

Aridland Agriculture Department invited Professor Jian-Kang Zhu. He is a Biotechnologist  scholar to visit the Department and present a seminar on  “Understanding and improving plant drought and salt tolerance for freshwater-limited agriculture” during (Dec. 9-10-2009).He presented his seminar in Maqam Campus.

Professor Zhu is an American professor. He is the Director of the Plant Stress Genomic and Technology Research Center and Named Professor of Molecular Biology and Plant Physiology at KAUST. He is also the Jane S. Johnson Professor of Plant Biology at the University of California, Riverside. He served as director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at UC Riverside. He has previously worked at other academic institutions such as the University of Arizona, Auburn University and Rockefeller University.

His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying plant responses to harsh environments such as soil salinity, drought and cold temperatures. In addition, he is interested in the mechanisms of gene silencing and in the role of epigenetic gene regulation in stress adaptation. He uses a combination of genetic, biochemical, genomic and proteomic approaches to analyze various levels of gene regulation (chromatin level/epigenetic, transcriptional, post-transcriptional and protein activity) and to understand stress signaling and stress tolerance. Dr. Zhu’s research group identified a number of key genes for plant salt and drought stress tolerance, and discovered a mechanism of active DNA demethylation that is critical for epigenetic gene regulation. He has authored more than 200  journal articles and was recently recognized as the most cited plant scientist in the United States for the period of 1997–2007. He recently, published three articles in “Nature” .