Steven Le Hung Cheng

Dr. Steven Le Hung Cheng is a researcher in the Department of Plant Microbe Interactions at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany. His work focuses on the molecular mechanisms of plant immunity, particularly the role of nucleotide-based signaling molecules.

His primary research investigates how plants activate innate immunity through intracellular ribosylated and charged nucleotide second messengers including pRib-AMP/pRib-ADP and di-ADPR/ADPr-ATP. Dr. Cheng collaborates with organic chemists from Stephanie Kath-Schorr's laboratory to synthesize these nucleotide infochemicals and evaluate their in vivo biological activities. His team is actively developing synthetic derivatives with enhanced chemical stability to determine their immunostimulatory potential in both model systems (Arabidopsis) and crop plants.

His broader research program spans multiple interconnected areas: optimizing plant performance by mapping interfaces between development and metabolism (Research Area 1), studying plant microbiota metabolic networks and edaphic adaptation (Research Area 2), advancing synthetic and reconstruction biology approaches (Research Area 3), and applying theoretical plant biology with data science methodologies (Research Area 4). His work connects with the institute's Plant Metabolism and Metabolomics Facility and Imaging Platform.

Dr. Cheng's research builds upon recent findings described in publications such as Jia et al., 2022, which details the biochemical action of TIR-derived nucleotide infochemicals on EDS1-PAD4-ADR1 and EDS1-SAG101-NRG1 signaling nodes in plant immune responses.