Zhongting Deng won one of the Best Poster Awards at the 3rd Workshop Carbon Allocation in Plants

Zhongting Deng is a PhD student in the "Carbon, Allocation, Transport and Signaling" CATS team, supervised by Sylvie Dinant, Senior Scientist and leader of the team. His poster, was awarded with a "Best Poster Award". It was one of the 22 posters presented at the 3rd “Carbon Allocation in Plants” workshop. It concerns the role of sugar transporters in root development. These prizes were awarded following a vote by the workshop participants.

His PhD project focuses on the role of sugar transporters in root développement and rhizodeposition.
Higher plants are vital in reducing human-made carbon emissions by absorbing atmospheric CO₂ and storing it in their biomass or soil via root-related mechanisms. Understanding how carbon is allocated from photosynthetic organs to belowground organs is crucial for predicting how plants respond to environmental changes. This Ph.D. project focuses on elucidating the molecular and physiological mechanisms that regulate carbon partitioning from shoots to roots and its subsequent release into the rhizosphere by rhizodeposition, particularly under climate change-related elevated CO₂ concentration and water limitation. We focus on sucrose transport and unloading in root tissues, which are facilitated by plasma membrane-localised sugar/proton symporters from the SUC/SUT family, expressed within the vascular system. By combining molecular, physiological, and imaging approaches, the project aims to provide new insights into how sucrose transporters regulate belowground carbon fluxes and contribute to soil carbon sequestration in a changing climate.


Poster ssesion at the 3rd workshop "Carbon Allocation in Plants" 


Zhongting Deng and Sylvie Dinant in the team's laboratory


Research developed at the Institute Jean-Pierre Bourgin for Plant Sciences.