Tai-ping Sun

Biosketch

Tai-ping Sun, PhD is a Professor of Biology at Duke University. She earned her BS in Chemistry from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and her PhD in Biochemistry and Genetics from Duke University. Sun was a postdoctoral scholar at University of Oxford in UK and Harvard University, and joined the Department of Botany faculty at Duke in 1992. She is a fellow of AAAS and a member of the NAS. She is a reviewing editor of The Plant Cell, and a contributing Faculty Member in Faculty Opinions. She received the Distinguished Research Award from the International Plant Growth Substances Association in 2010. and was recognized among the world’s most influential researchers in 2014–2016 by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate.

Research Interests

Dr. Sun's research has focused on elucidating the sites and regulatory mechanisms of plant hormone gibberellin (GA) biosynthesis as well as the conserved molecular events of GA perception and its signaling pathway. GA plays pivotal roles in regulating diverse processes throughout the plant life cycle. Mutations affecting GA biosynthesis or GA response were the key to control plant stature in wheat and rice that led to dramatically increased grain yield and contributed greatly to the success of the ‘Green Revolution’ in the 1960s. Dr. Sun's research identified DELLA proteins, which are conserved master growth regulators in plants whose stability is controlled by GA and its nuclear receptor GID1. DELLAs have emerged as central regulators that integrate internal and external signals via direct protein-protein interactions with key transcription factors (TFs). Her study found that these crucial DELLA-TF interactions are oppositely regulated by two novel sugar modifications, revealing a new paradigm in linking metabolic status to gene expression and cell growth.