Xiao Lab Awarded $2M NIH MIRA Award for Groundbreaking Plant Biology Research

The Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) is proud to announce that Dr. Shunyuan Xiao, IBBR Fellow and Professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture, has received a five-year, $2 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA, R35) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

This prestigious award supports highly promising scientists as they pursue creative, long-term research. Dr. Xiao’s new project, “Mechanisms of Cell-Autonomous Plasma Membrane Stabilization and Repair in Plants,” will explore how plant cells repair themselves - an area of biology that remains largely unexplored.

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.

Dr. Xiao’s lab studies how plants defend themselves against fungal infections and how fungi invade their hosts. Recently, 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.

By uncovering the molecular machinery behind plant “self-healing,” Dr. 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.