Speaker
Wei Gong
Time
2025.11.26 16:00-17:30
Abstract
Eukaryotic cells employ selective autophagy to degrade damaged or unwanted cellular components, including organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts. Autophagosomes typically have a diameter of 0.5–1.5 microns. In plant cells, lytic vacuoles can reach hundreds of microns in diameter, while chloroplasts, important autophagic substrates, are 5–7 microns in diameter, both far exceeding the size of autophagosomes. To understand how chloroplast autophagy may occur, we constructed a synthetic chloroplast autophagy receptor and observed receptor-mediated chloroplast microautophagy, in which vacuoles engulfed chloroplasts. Moderate induction of chloroplast autophagy promoted rosette growth and enhanced herbicide resistance, while excessive induction inhibited plant growth, suggesting that there is an upper limit to the increase in plant biomass by enhancing autophagy. Through another study in exploring the function of ATG1-ATG8 in autophagosome formation and expansion, we also observed an upper limit to increasing autophagic flux in plants. We further described how inhibiting mitochondrial respiration leads to remodeling of the endomembrane system in Arabidopsis root cells, revealing that low energy levels also induce mitochondrial microautophagy. Since low energy levels also impairs vacuole morphology and function, a clear upper limit also exists for mitochondrial microautophagy.
Bio
Qingqiu Gong is an Associate Professor at the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Peking University in 2001 and her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2006. From 2009 to 2016, she served as a Principle Investigator/Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University. She was promoted to full professor in 2016. In 2019 she joined SJTU. Dr. Gong’s research focuses on plant cell biology, particularly on understanding membrane trafficking and organelle dynamics in plant growth, development, and stress responses. She also studies evolutionarily conserved “immortal genes” and has identified the plant Hippo kinase. She has published 47 peer-reviewed articles in mainstream journals of cell biology and plant biology, such as Nature Structural Molecular Biology, Nature Communications, Autophagy, Cell Reports, Molecular Plant, New Phytologist, Plant Physiology, and BMC Biology. By Oct 2025 her research papers has been cited 10630 times. She has been invited many times to give talks on international and national conferences on autophagy and plant cell biology.