Chuanyou Li: Mechanisms and applications of the plant wound response

Crop breeding faces two key bottlenecks. Widespread adaptive compensation causes an inherent growth-defense trade-off in plants, making it challenging to simultaneously improve crop yield and stress resistance. Meanwhile, plant regeneration capacity is highly genotype-dependent, which severely restricts the application of genome-editing and transgenic technologies in breeding. Solving these bottlenecks requires major advances in the fundamental mechanisms of plant immunity and organ regeneration.

To address these challenges, we use tomato wound response as a model to explore the regulatory mechanisms of plant immune homeostasis and organ regeneration. A critical conceptual innovation from the lab is the division of plant wound responses into two interconnected physiological processes: immunity and regeneration. Through systematic investigations, the lab deciphered a novel mechanism wherein plants employ functionally antagonistic systemin receptors (SYR1 and SYR2) as sensors of wound severity to fine-tune immune homeostasis. Additionally, the lab identified the peptide REF1 (Regeneration Factor 1) as the primary wound signal that triggers tissue repair and organ regeneration.​

These findings not only provide theoretical foundations and molecular targets for the synergistic improvement of crop yield and resistance, but also offer a convenient and universal technical approach for establishing high-efficiency genetic transformation systems independent of genotype constraints.​