Myeongjune Jeon

Postdoc

Plant reproduction goes beyond simply painting our planet with colorful flowers. It drives evolution, fuels ecosystems, and even charts the trajectory of our lives. My goal is to understand how plant reproduction, a driver that steers the fate of life on Earth, has been optimized over centuries to navigate the turbulent challenges of climate change.

During my PhD, I characterized the floral regulators that allow plants to sense environmental changes and reproduce at optimal times. Now, I’m shifting my focus to explore how climate change has influenced the molecular evolution of these regulators and reshaped reproductive behaviors, enabling plants to adapt to the new climatic regime. By analyzing the physiological and molecular traces in herbarium specimens, the authentic historical witnesses of the past two centuries, and using advanced genetic techniques to "de-extinct" these specimens, I hope to illuminate the resilience and adaptability of plant life in the face of our changing climate.