Abstract:
Pests and pathogens present major threats to global food production. Breeding resistant crop cultivars and developing effective bio-control strategies are key solutions for sustainable agriculture. They are thus the key goals in the study of plant immunity. A deeper understanding of how plants sense danger and respond appropriately is fundamental to achieving these goals. In this seminar, I will talk about how plants use a suite of sensing systems to detect and respond not only to bacterial pathogens and herbivorous insects, but also to danger signals from neighboring plants under stress.

Bio:
Dr. Lei Wang is a Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator at Yazhouwan National Laboratory in China. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Current Biology. Dr. Wang received his PhD from the University of Tübingen (Germany) and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Bern (Switzerland), supported by the prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. His research focuses on understanding how the plant immune system shapes plant-herbivore and plant-plant interactions. His work has been published in leading journals including Cell, Nature plants and Current Biology.