Feng Feng

Feng obtained his Ph.D. in 2012 from Tsinghua University in China. His Ph.D. project studied how bacterial effector proteins regulate plant immunity and discovered a new biochemical mechanism by which bacterial pathogens battle plant immune system. He then continued working on plant immunity as a Research Associate at Dr. Jian-Min Zhou's Lab at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Following the work on plant immunity, he chose to spend his postdoctoral research on plant symbiosis and joined the group of Dr. Giles Oldroyd at the John Innes Centre (from 2013 to 2017) and University of Cambridge (from 2017 to 2020). He was particularly interested in understanding how plant recognizes signaling molecules produced by beneficial microbes to establish symbiosis. He started his independent research career in August 2020 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Oklahoma State University. His research aims to understand how and why plants engage with their rhizosphere communities in response to the diverse environmental conditions.

Research Interests:

Plant roots are associated with innumerable microorganisms including both pathogens and beneficial symbionts. Pathogens restrict plant growth by diverting resources and releasing toxins, in contrast, symbionts promote plant growth through increasing nutrient availability. Plants therefore must make the decision to either promote or inhibit the growth of microbes they encounter. In most plants two different signaling pathways act to decide the appropriate response, the immune signaling pathway which restricts microbial colonization, and the symbiosis signaling pathway which facilitates microbial colonization. Our research demonstrated that the environmental condition of the plant plays a very important role in informing the plant's decision through regulating the dynamic interplay between immunity and symbiosis pathways. We are currently using a combination of molecular, cell biology, genetic and biochemical approaches to explore how the different abiotic environmental factors regulate plant-microbe interactions and how plant immunity and symbiosis signaling pathways affect the broader microbial community. Our research will inform the design of novel cropping systems that support crops with improved capacities to extract nutrients from their environments to reduce chemical fertilizer use, ward off diseases and thrive in the face of climate change.

We are recruiting Ph.D. students and Postdocs. If you are interested in our research, please contact Dr. Feng with your CV and a brief statement of your research interests. If you are undergraduate student and would like to spend your time on research project, welcome to join us!