Abiotic stress, including salinity, is a severe challenge in agricultural production. Our lab focuses on membrane protein's role in plant abiotic stress tolerance. We use structural and functional information of plant membrane proteins to understand and develop plant salinity tolerance. We also have interests in recombinant membrane protein/polypeptide production, purification, and characterization. Structure-based protein engineering is our third research direction, where we attempt to design, recombinant production, and characterization of engineered proteins with an evolved function.

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Aim 1 : Stress Response and Membrane Protein: membrane proteins are involved in stress perception, stress-signal transduction, and the attempt to reduce salinity stress. Currently, we are focussing on plant membrane proteins involved in salinity stress 

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Aim 2 : Recombinant Membrane Protein Expression, Purification, and Characterization: membrane protein purification is challenging. We attempt to study and develop protocols in recombinant expression, purification, and characterization of membrane proteins

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Aim 3: Protein Engineering: sequence and structure-based protein engineering to gain - or loss - of function in proteins