At 23:00 on May 22, the internationally renowned academic journal Cell published the scientific research achievements of Li Chuanyou, professor of the School of Life Sciences of Shandong Agricultural University, on line. The team made a major breakthrough in the field of plant regeneration, and found that the regeneration factor REF1 generated by cell injury is a primary injury signaling molecule that triggers tissue repair and organ regeneration, and has played a huge role in plant regeneration.

In nature, immovable plants have formed an incomparable ability of animals to cope with damage in the long-term evolution process. They can not only quickly activate the defense response to resist the invasion of diseases and pests, but also easily and freely carry out tissue repair, organ and even the regeneration of the whole life. "What regulates organ regeneration" is one of the most important 25 scientific issues among the 125 major scientific issues unknown to mankind put forward by Science magazine in 2005.

Li Chuanyou's team has been studying tomatoes for a long time, using genetic methods to analyze plant systemic defense signal pathways, and has obtained a series of tomato mutants with changes in systemic signaling pathways. They creatively put forward a new concept that defense functions and regeneration functions are inseparable in plant injury response, and found small peptides that induce plant regeneration for the first time, The team renamed this small peptide as regeneration factor REF1.

More importantly, they found that the role of REF1 is conservative in the plant world, and the corresponding REF1 small peptide and its receptor can be found in almost all dicotyledons and monocotyledons. External application of REF1 can not only significantly improve the regeneration ability and genetic transformation efficiency of tomato, but also increase the regeneration ability and genetic transformation efficiency of soybean, wheat and corn by several times.

Zhong Kang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that this research has a breakthrough significance in basic scientific research and biotechnology application in the field of cell differentiation and regeneration. The discovery and utilization of plant regeneration factor REF1 is of great significance for China to win the battle of seed industry and accelerate the industrialization of national biological breeding.

This research is the first time that a university in Shandong Province has published a paper in the field of plant science as a corresponding author unit in Cell magazine. Yang Wentao, a doctoral candidate of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhai Huawei, an associate professor of Shandong Agricultural University, Wu Fangming, an associate researcher of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Deng Lei, a professor of Shandong Agricultural University, are co first authors of the paper, and Li Chuanyou and Deng Lei are co corresponding authors. (Reporter Zhao Qiuli, Feng Fan Correspondent Zhai Ronghui)

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