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College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction Laboratory
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    • Activation and Attenuation of Plant PRR Complexes and Signaling
    • Transcriptional, Post-transcriptional, and Post-translational Regulation of Plant Immunity
    • Coordination of Plant Immunity, Growth, and Development
    • Regulation of Plant Autoimmunity
    • Immunomodulatory Phytocytokines in Plant Immunity
    • Functional and Translational Genomics in Cotton Disease Resistance
    • Understanding and Improving Cotton Abiotic Stress Adaptation
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Coordination of Plant Immunity, Growth, and Development

Plant immune receptors PRRs are receptor-like kinases (RLKs) and receptor-like proteins (RLPs), many of which are implicated in sensing extrinsic and intrinsic signals, and govern diverse cellular responses. The signaling pathways mediated by leucine-rich repeat RLKs and RLPs converge at a small group of RLKs, namely somatic embryogenesis receptor kinases (SERKs), via ligand-induced heterodimerization and transphosphorylation. As shared coreceptors in diverse signaling receptorsomes, SERKs exhibit functional plasticity, yet maintain a high degree of signaling specificity. We study how SERKs maintain the functional specificity in plant immunity, cell death contamination, growth, and cell differentiation, and the regulation and activation mechanisms of SERK-associated receptorsomes.




SERKs function as co-receptors mediating various physiological responses by complexing with different receptors. See Current Biology (2020)30: PR293-R294.

Key references:

  1. Yu, X., Xu, G., Li, B., de Souza Vespoli, L., Liu, H., Moeder, W., Chen, S., de Oliveira,M.V.V.,de Souza, S.A., Shao, W., Rodrigues, B., Ma, Y., Chhajed, S., Xue, S., Berkowitz, G.A., Yoshioka, K., He, P.,and Shan, L. (2019) The receptor kinases BAK1/SERK4 regulate Ca2+ channel-mediated cellular homeostasis for cell death containment. Current Biology 29: 3778-3790.
  2. Zhou, J., Liu, D., Wang, P., Lin, W., Chen, S., Mishev, K., Lu, D., Kumar, R., Vanhoutte, I., He, P. Russinova, E., and Shan, L. (2018) Regulation of Arabidopsis brassinosteroid receptor BRI1 endocytosis and intracellular degradation by the E3 ubiquitin ligase PUB12/PUB13-mediated ubiquitination. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 115: E1906-E1915.
  3. Meng, X., Chen, X., Liu, C., Yu, X., Gao, X., Torii, U. K., He, P. and Shan, L., (2015) Differential function of Arabidopsis SERK family receptor-like kinases in stomatal patterning. Current Biology 25: 2361-2372.
  4. Lin, W., Lu, D., Gao, X., Jian, S., Ma, X., Wang, Z., Mengiste, T., He, P., and Shan L. (2013) Inverse modulation of plant immunity and plant development by a receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase BIK1. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A 110: 12114-12119.
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