$2M NIH Award for Groundbreaking Plant Biology Research

A new five-year, $2 million award from the National Institutes of Health will support a University of Maryland researcher’s study of how plant cells repair themselves—an area of biology that remains largely unexplored.

Professor Shunyuan Xiao in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture is studying how plants fend off fungal infections and how fungi invade their hosts. Recently, Xiao—also a fellow at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research—and his team identified several plant genes that may be involved in the rapid, self-protective responses of cells when a fungus tries to break through. These genes could hold the key to understanding how plants repair membrane damage and how that repair process ties into their immune defenses.

Every living cell is wrapped in a thin, protective “skin” called the plasma membrane. In humans and animals, scientists know a lot about how cells sense and patch up damage to this membrane. But in plants, that process is a mystery. The presence of a tough cell wall makes it harder to see how plants detect and respond to injuries at the cellular level.

By uncovering the molecular machinery behind plant “self-healing,” Xiao’s work could lead to new ways to protect crops from fungal diseases, improve global food security, and even shed light on fundamental repair mechanisms shared by plants and animals alike.