Rhee Lab Research
Climate change is the single biggest threat to global human health, and is expected to cause about a quarter of a million deaths globally from malnutrition, infectious diseases and heat stress (link). Climate change is rapidly changing the habitability of many species on many places on Earth. We need innovations in science and technology to tackle global sustainability, food security, human health, and biodiversity.
Plants not only underpin terrestrial ecosystems and feed us, but also bestow renewable energy and essential medicines. Plants also sequester a significant proportion of the world’s carbon. Therefore, to meet today’s societal challenges, we need technological and conceptual advances in plant science.
Plants not only underpin terrestrial ecosystems and feed us, but also bestow renewable energy and essential medicines. Plants also sequester a significant proportion of the world’s carbon. Therefore, to meet today’s societal challenges, we need technological and conceptual advances in plant science.
We aim to uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying adaptive traits in the face of heat, drought, nutrient limitation, latitude and pests. We study a variety of plants including models, orphan crops, medicinal and desert plants. More recently our work has involved studying a model nematode C. elegans, fungal pathogens, corals, and piezophilic bacterium.
Our group employs computational modeling and targeted laboratory testing to study mechanisms of adaptation, functions of novel genes, organization and function of metabolic networks, and chemical and neuronal code of plant-animal interactions. We are also interested in developing translational research programs involving carbon sequestration by plants and biomass maximization under drought in bioenergy crops. See our Publications and Talks.
Metabolic Engineering
We model genome-scale metabolic networks of cells, organ systems, and organisms to understand, predict, and engineer desirable metabolic traits and discover novel biosynthetic pathways.
Sustainability
With an interdisciplinary team, we investigate thermo-adaptation and drought tolerance in plants, which is critical and timely for global sustainability, food security, and species conservation. We work on this problem in sorghum, pennycress, and several other crops such as rice, soybean, maize, cassava, potato, and tomato (C-SPIRIT).
Anhydrobiosis
We study how organisms survive desiccation from the molecular to the organismal level across plants, fungi, and animals. This project is a collaboration between the 9 institutes who form the Water and Life Interface Institute, or WALII (pronounced wally).
Data-Driven Discovery
Over 25-75% of protein-encoding genes in all sequenced genomes are not similar to anything with known molecular functions. We develop approaches to systematically characterize these ‘unknown’ genes. We believe this dark matter of the genome in plants is a gold mine for the riskphilic, creative, and optimistic.
Plant Cell Atlas
We are creating a community of scientists – the Plant Cell Atlas – from plant biology, data science, artificial intelligence, imaging, proteomics, single-cell profiling, and nanotechnology to lay the groundwork for creating a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic molecular organization of the plant cell.
Neuroscience
Plants produce a huge variety of phytochemicals, but the majority of those compounds remain uncharacterized. One of our projects, called NeuroPlant, aims to address this gap by leveraging chemicals made in plants as tools to manipulate and decipher neuronal pathways.