Invited by State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests (SKLBPI) and the Department of International Cooperation and Graduate Student, IPP, Prof. Steve BRIGGS, the Fellow of US National Academy of Sciences, visited IPP on 28 July, together with Mr. Cynthia Stauffer, Director of Global Regulatory Affairs at Bayer CropScience, and Dr. Sue Jarboe, the leading group secretary of Sino-US cooperation project in biotechnology safety management. Dr. QIU Dewen, the DDG of IPP, met with the foreign guests.

QIU Dewen greeted the guests first and introduced the basic information on the innovations in scientific research, training, international exchange and cooperation, and construction of platform at IPP. Dr. CHEN Julian, the Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Graduate Student, briefly recalled the current status of cooperation and outcomes between IPP and universities and research institutions in the US. Prof. BRIGGS introduced the research directions and major achievements he and his team obtained. He appreciated IPP’s achievements in research and international cooperation and exchange. Both sides expressed that they would strengthen the cooperation and exchange in the areas of plant protection, transcriptomics and proteomics.

During his visit, Prof. BRIGGS was invited to speak on Maize Gene Expression Networks. Through the transcriptomic and proteomic analyses on different maize tissues at different growth stages, Prof. BRIGGS and his team constructed genic co-expression networks. They discovered that only 14% genes had consistent level for gene transcription and protein expression. Most of genes had low correlation between mRNA concentration and protein expression quantity. They inferred that plant regulates gene transcription and protein co-expression networks to adapt to alterations in factors, such as environment. Their results will be published recently in Science. The seminar was hosted by Dr. WANG Lixia, the Deputy Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Graduate Student. More than 80 scientists and graduates at IPP and from the Biotechnology Research Institute of CAAS attended the seminar. DDG QIU, Director CHEN, Profs. WANG Xifeng, ZENG Hongmei, QI Fangjun, LIU Wende, GAO Li, etc., were present at the seminar. The scientists and graduate students deeply discussed with Prof. BRIGGS on the jointly interested issues in the area. After the seminar, Prof. BRIGGS visited the laboratories of Insect-Resistant Technology Group, Protein Pesticide Group, Plant Disease Resistance and Functional Genomics Group and Cereal Virus Diseases Group and discussed the possibilities for future collaboration.

Prof. BRIGGS’ visit increased the mutual understanding. The two sides reached tentatively a consensus for collaboration and therefore laid foundation for later in depth collaboration and exchange in the areas of plant protection. It was learnt that Prof. BRIGGS is present chairman and distinguished professor of Section of Cell and Developmental Biology in University of California-San Diego. He is also member of the Editorial Board for Plant Cell and Vice Editor-in-Chief for Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. Prof. BRIGGS has a long career in plant mechanisms of immunity researches and in genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics, etc. He has published more than 30 papers in famous international journals, such as Science, Cell, PNAS, Plant Cell, etc.