On February 13, 2025, the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at National Taiwan University (NTU) had the distinct honor of hosting Dr. Rosa Lozano-Durán from the Center for Plant Molecular Biology at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, for a specialized lecture and academic exchange. Dr. Lozano-Durán, an internationally recognized expert in plant virology, focuses her research on the interactions between plants and geminiviruses, and is a leading scholar in this field. Her visit was at the invitation of President Fuh-Jyh Jan of National Chung Hsing University and Yushan Scholar Dr. Wilhelm Gruissem, and during her stay in Taiwan, she engaged in in-depth academic exchanges with faculty and students of the department.
The lecture, titled "Hostile takeover – Viral strategies to hijack a plant," provided a detailed exposition of the characteristics of plant viruses as obligate parasitic pathogens. Dr. Lozano-Durán elucidated the simple genomic structure of these viruses, which allows them to express only a limited number of proteins, necessitating a high degree of reliance on the plant host to complete the infection process. She highlighted that geminivirus proteins employ various strategies to enhance viral functions, including hijacking host resources to promote viral infection and attracting insect vectors to facilitate viral transmission. Furthermore, Dr. Lozano-Durán noted that while the functions of many viral proteins have been identified, a significant portion remains poorly understood, indicating that our current understanding of plant viruses is still in its nascent stages. She encouraged young scholars to maintain their passion for research and expressed her hope that more researchers would dedicate themselves to the field of plant virology.
Following the lecture, faculty and students of the department engaged in an insightful luncheon exchange with Dr. Lozano-Durán. Subsequently, accompanied by Assistant Professor Li Chang, she toured the department's research laboratories and further discussed mutual research interests and potential collaborative opportunities. The Department of PPM at NTU looks forward to future opportunities for academic cooperation and research exchange with Dr. Lozano-Durán, and to contributing to the advancement of plant virology research globally.