施臥虎Wolfgang Schmidt

中央研究院植物暨微生物學研究所研究員

研究土壤獲取營養的控制機制 改善糧食作物品質

The acquisition of nutrients from the soil is a key factor that controls plant fitness and, in the case of food crops, yield and quality. In my laboratory, we seek to understand the mechanisms that control the acquisition of the essential mineral nutrient iron and the processes involved in the recalibration of cellular iron homeostasis.


The question as to the traits that allow calcicole ( Greek for chalk-loving ) plants to thrive on neutral or alkaline soils has puzzled plant biologists for more than two centuries. A combinatorial approach comprising genetic, bioinformatic, and transcriptomic techniques led to the discovery of a novel strategy of plants to acquire iron from alkaline substrates via the synthesis and secretion of catecholic coumarins. We assume that the efficiency of coumarin-aided mobilization of iron has important consequences for the structure of natural ecosystems, and is a limiting factor for the yield and nutritional quality of crops grown on alkaline soils. Increasing the amount of secreted coumarins by molecular breeding or applying coumarins to soils with low available iron content are possible strategies to avoid yield losses caused by iron deficiency.


Another long-standing question is as to how the demand for iron is communicated between different plant parts. We recently identified a short bipartite consensus motif designated as IRONMAN ( IMA ) that is conserved in numerous, highly diverse peptides in angiosperms. Presumably, IMAs regulate iron homeostasis by acting as phloem-mobile signals in flowering plants to communicate the nutritional status of the leaves to the roots. Increasing the abundance of IMA peptides in plants was found to boost the iron content in edible parts of crops such as tomato and rice, opening a novel route for generating iron-enriched plants that may aid in combating iron deficiency-induced anemia, the most common nutritional disorder worldwide.

得獎感言

I am very gratified to receive the MOST Outstanding Research Fellow award 2019. At this time,I have been living and working in Taiwan for more than 14 years, a big move from my previous positions in Europe that I have never regretted. During all these years, I received generous funding from Academia Sinica and MOST and was provided with high-end equipment in core facilities, allowing me to run a prosperous research program. I am extremely thankful for having had the chance to join the exciting research community in Taiwan, which offered countless possibilities and challenges that make my professional life here not only successful but also rewarding and enjoyable. For instance, I had the opportunity to organize two international symposia in Taipei, the International Symposium on Root Systems Biology in 2012 and the 19th edition of the International Symposium on Iron Nutrition and Interactions in Plants, endeavors that provided the stage for several collaborations, inspired the research program of my laboratory, and, hopefully, stimulated the exchange of knowledge and ideas at the Academia Sinica campus. Finally and above all, I became the father of the best child in the w orld, a fact that has enriched my lif e in Taiwan in the most fulfilling

個人勵志銘

“Answers do not matter so much as questions, said the Good Fairy. A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question.＂- Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds