Jian-Kang Zhu
Jian-Kang Zhu is a plant scientist, researcher and academic. He is a Senior Principal Investigator in the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is also the Academic Director of CAS Center of Excellence in Plant Sciences. Zhu is known for his research in plant stress biology, epigenetics and gene editing. He published over 400 research articles, and one of the most cited scientists in life sciences. He has several patents for improving plant stress tolerance issued by many countries. Zhu is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement  of Science. In 2010, he was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Education. Zhu received a B.S. in Soils and Agricultural Chemistry in 1987 from Beijing Agricultural University. After one year as a graduate student in Peking University, he moved to the United States, where he joined the University of California, Riverside for his M.S. in Botany. After completing his M.S. in 1990, Zhu received a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Purdue University in 1993. He completed his postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University. Career. Zhu taught briefly at Auburn University in 1995 before joining University  of Arizona, where he became Associate Professor in 1999 and Full Professor in 2000. In 2004, he left University of Arizona to join University of California, Riverside, as the Presidential Chair Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences. He became the Jane Johnson Chair Professor at UC Riverside in 2007. From 2004 to 2006, he served as the Director of UC Riverside’s Institute for Integrative Genome Biology. From 2010 through 2020, Zhu joined Purdue University as Distinguished Professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, and Department of Biochemistry. From 2009 to 2011, he served as  the founding Director of Plant Stress Genomics Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. In 2017, he became the Academic Director of Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zhu has been a member of the Editorial Board or Editorial Advisory Board of "National Science Review" since 2013, of "Molecular Plant" since 2012, of "Science China Life Sciences" since 2008, and of "The Plant Journal" 2001-2007. He was a Monitoring Editor (2000-2003) and then Associate Editor (2004-2005) of "Plant Physiology", an Associate Editor of "Plant Molecular Biology" (2000-2015), and  of "Molecular Genetics and Genomics" (2005-2010). Zhu co-founded FuturaGene in 2002 and served as a scientific advisor for the company until 2008. In 2007, he co-founded D-Helix and continues to serve as a scientific advisor. In 2012, Zhu established the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology (PSC), which is an international research institute within the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It works to address fundamental questions of plant biology to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability and to mitigate agriculture-related environmental degradation. Research and work. Zhu is known for his research on plant stress signaling pathways, epigenetic  mechanisms of gene regulation, and precise gene editing technologies in plants. In the early 2000s, Zhu’s lab discovered the Salt Overly Sensitive (SOS) signaling pathway that plays a central role in ion homeostasis and salt tolerance in plants. Zhu’s lab discovered several important components of abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis and signaling pathways, and achieved for the first time the in vitro reconstitution of the core ABA signaling pathway. They also discovered that the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) growth promotion pathway represses ABA signaling and stress responses in unstressed conditions, whereas ABA signaling represses the TOR pathway and growth  during times of stress. This discovery revealed a core mechanism through which plants balance growth and stress response and is therefore important for the efforts to breed environment resilient but high yielding crops. Zhu’s lab discovered ABA-mimicking small chemicals that can be applied to plants to activate the ABA pathway to reduce transpirational water loss and to induce the expression of drought responsive genes, thus leading to drought resistance in plants. These chemicals are easy to synthesize, are non-toxic, and much less expensive and more stable than ABA, thus have potential for applications in agriculture, turfgrass and  horticultural industries to protect plants from drought stress and benefit the environment by reducing the depletion of available freshwater resources. They also identified several regulatory factors for plant cold stress response. In addition, they discovered a number of plant miRNAs and siRNAs, and elucidated their function in regulating plant stress responses. In epigenetics, Zhu’s lab discovered the Arabidopsis 5-methylcytosine DNA glycosylase/lyase ROS1 in 2002. ROS1 is the first DNA demethylase (the enzyme initiating active DNA demethylation) established with genetic and biochemical evidence. It initiates a base-excision repair pathway for active DNA demethylation to erase DNA methylation  marks and to prevent DNA methylation-mediated gene silencing. Zhu’s lab has found nearly all of the enzymes in the biochemical pathway for active DNA demethylation in plants. They have also identified the first known eukaryotic protein complex that functions in regulating active DNA demethylation, which is important for understanding of the targeting of DNA demethylase for precise control of DNA methylation reprogramming during development, stress responses, aging and diseases including cancer. Furthermore, they discovered several important components of the RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) pathway that controls de novo DNA methylation in plants, and proposed the concept of  a methylstat that senses and balances genome-wide DNA methylation and demethylation activities. From the year 2010, Zhu’s lab has been developing efficient methods for precise gene editing in plants using TALE nucleases and CRISPR/Cas. They developed the first efficient gene targeting method for the model plant Arabidopsis. They have also developed an elegant tandem repeat-HDR (homology-directed repair) approach for efficient sequence insertion and replacement in rice, which is important for crop functional genomics research and breeding.