The current featured researcher is:

Dr. Zhanyuan Zhang

Dr. Zhanyuan Zhang received his B.S. degree at Shenyang Agriculture University in Shenyang, China; his M.S. degree at Shanxi Agriculture University in Shanxi, China; and his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After a two year post-doc at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he worked at Iowa State University for nearly 2 years before coming to the University of Missouri to serve as the Director of the MU Plant Transformation Core Facility. Since Dr. Zhang’s arrival in 2000, the MU Plant Transformation Core Facility has grown from just two employees to currently more than six employees serving over 20 clients both on- and off-campus.

              

Dr. Zhang is overseeing several research projects including improvements in soybean, maize, and arabidopsis transformation. A recent discovery in soybean transformation has led to the filing of a U.S. provisional patent for this new invention.

Another project is the development of an efficient gene silencing system in soybean employing RNAi. Dr. Zhang’s research team has used the soybean FAD3 (omega-3 fatty acid desaturase) gene family as a test model and obtained low 18:3 fatty acids of the fad-3 mutant phenotype. This result suggests that RNAi can be a powerful tool to silence the soybean gene family. They are also developing functional genomics tools using T-DNA-based mutagenesis for soybean functional genomics studies.

Dr. Zhang’s laboratory has recently improved Agrobacterium-mediated transformation in maize Hi-II using standard binary vectors. This improved transformation process employs low-salt media in combined use with antioxidant L-cysteine alone or L-cysteine and dithiothreitol (DTT) during the Agrobacterium infection stage.

The enhanced maize transformation protocol established here will be advantageous for maize genetic engineering studies including transformation-based functional genomics.

Dr. Zhang has also started using Arabidopsis as a model for a quick test of some of his research hypotheses which otherwise would take years to do using crop plants.

For more information, contact Dr. Zhang or visit the MU Plant Transformation Core Facility’s website.