On November 15, 2024, the prestigious international academic journalCellpublished online a research paper from the Liu Hongtao research team at Shenzhen University titledThe Arabidopsis blue-light photoreceptor CRY2 is active in darkness to inhibit root growth. This paper breaks traditional research frameworks by revealing for the first time that the blue-light receptor cryptochrome CRY exhibits unique functions in its non-light-activated state, demonstrating that blue light can both "activate" and "deactivate" CRY functions.
Dr. Zeng Desheng, a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Life Sciences and Oceanography of Shenzhen University, is the first author of the paper. Professor Liu Hongtao, Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Oceanography at Shenzhen University, is the corresponding author. Doctoral student Lü Junqing and Professor Li Xu also contributed to the work. The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Professor Liu Hongtao, Dean and doctoral supervisor at the College of Life Sciences and Oceanography at Shenzhen University, serves as the president of the Plant Biotechnology Female Scientists Sub-society of the Chinese Society for Plant Biology (CSPB). She is an editorial board member of several renowned journals includingPlant Cell,Current Biology,PNAS(as guest editor),JIPB,Scientia Sinica (Vitae),Plant Communications, andaBiotech. Professor Liu has received numerous accolades including the National Science Foundation of China's Outstanding Young Scientists Fund, the Ministry of Science and Technology's Mid-to-Young Age Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talents, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Hundred Talents Program. She has also been awarded the State Council Government Special Allowance, the China Youth Science and Technology Award, the China Young Female Scientist Award, the Asia-Pacific Society for Photobiology Young Scientist Award, and the SANANBIO Award for Outstanding Contributions in Photobiology. Her systematic research on "the regulation of plant development plasticity by light signals" has yielded a series of significant findings, which have been published as a corresponding author in journals such asDevelopmental Cell,Nature Plants,Nature Structural & Molecular Biology,Nature Communications,EMBO Journal,PNAS, andPlant Cell.
Article link:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.10.031
