Dr. Jixiang Han delivering a lecture at  WBG 

On May 9th, Dr. Jixiang Han from Conagen Biology Company, USA was invited by Professor Yansheng Zhang from key laboratory of plant germplasm enhancement and specialty agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences to make a lecture entitled “from lipid metabolism to stigma biology” in Wuhan Botanical Garden.

Dr. Jixiang Han reported that the cloning and characterization of a cytochrome P450 gene, which encodes a fatty acyl-CoA ω-hydroxylase involved in estolide biosynthesis in the stigma, and it was isolated from a developing stigma EST gene library. The P450 gene was implicated in ω-hydroxylation following RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated suppression. It was concluded that the cytochrome P450 enzyme is the key fatty acyl-CoA ω-hydroxylase essential for the production of ω-hydroxy fatty acids and the biosynthesis of triacylglycerol-/diacylglycerol-based estolide polyesters in the petunia stigma.

Dr. Han got the doctoral degree in science in Hamburg University, Germany and continued postdoctral study in Miami University and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, USA. Currently, he is a research scientist in Conagen Biology Company in USA. He was involved in KCS elongase, LPAAT transferase, P450 hydroxylase, etc. that all related to lipid biosynthesis and now he is focusing on the field of natural product biosynthesis. He has some research publications in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, The Plant Journal and so on.