● Fungal life in deep biosphere and their roles in biogeochemical cycle

The sub-seafloor biosphere is the biggest discovery that scientific ocean drilling project has ever made. Intense studies have been made on bacteria and archaea while fungi, which played an important role in organic decomposition, have not been received much attention and only a few of studies have been carried out on the fungi in shallow sediments (<1.0km). By joining IODP Expedition 337, we have got a series coal-bearing sediment samples (Oligocene ~ Miocene) down to 2.5 km below the ocean floor. A major focus of our research is to understand if and how fungi live and what roles do they play in the subseafloor environments. 

● Transcriptional regulation of NRPS in prokaryotic microbes and molecular basis of interaction between microbes and host plants 

Bacillus amyloliquefaciens is a new biocontrol agent that can be used to control many leaf and root fungal diseases due to the production of antifungal lipopeptides, which is synthesized by nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS). A major focus of our research is to disclose the transcriptional regulatory network of NRPS in B. amyloliquefaciens using modern techniques, including RNA polymerase site mutation technique, transcriptomic analysis and interdisciplinary approaches. Moreover, we also interest to understand the molecular basis on the interaction among biocontrol agents, pathogens and host plants.