Title: Structure and Function of Plant Cell Wall and Its Underlying Regulatory Mechanisms
Speaker: Shaolin Chen
Time: 4pm, October 14, 2016
Venue: S3119 

Introduction of Speaker:
Dr. Shaolin Chen graduated from Peking University in 1983 with a B.S. degree in Chemistry. He studied Chemical Biology at Peking University and received his M.S. degree in 1986. He decided to pursue his Ph.D. study in the United States and received his Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology from Cornell University in 1997. Dr. Chen continued his focus on the fundamental research of sustainable utilization of plant biomass at Carnegie Institution, Stanford University and Energy Biosciences Institute, University of California Berkeley. In 2013 he joined the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University and initiated the Biomass Energy Center for Arid and Semi-arid Lands in 2014. Dr. Chen’s group mainly focuses on (1) the regulatory mechanisms underlying biogenesis of plant cell wall and (2) enzymatic hydrolysis of plant cell wall polysaccharides for sugar fermentation and conversion to bio-products. The goals are (1) to engineer plants for improved stress tolerance and thus enhanced biomass productivity; (2) to engineer filamentous fungi for improved cellulase productivity and for enhanced efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis of plant cell wall polysaccharides for the production of bio-products. Representative publications include: (1) Chen, S., et al. Anisotropic Cell Expansion Is Affected through the Bidirectional Mobility of Cellulose Synthase Complexes and Phosphorylation at Two Critical Residues on CESA3. Plant Physiol. 2016. 171: 242-250; (2) Chen, S., et al. Mutations of CESA1 phosphorylation sites modulate anisotropic cell expansion and bidirectional mobility of cellulose synthase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2010. 107: 17188-17193.

College of Life Science
October 11th 2016