Lok Hang (Rex) Chan

Theme 3

Deciphering plant-soil microbiome interactions of various agricultural under nitrogen stress using metagenomics

Soil represents a highly diverse ecosystem with an interacting community of soil microbiome, which highly influences soil health and subsequently affects plant growth. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plant growth. The interactions between plant and soil microbiome under nitrogen stress are not completely understood. Rex’s research aims to investigate the plant-soil microbiome interactions under nitrogen stress for various crop species. Metagenomics approach, which studies all genetic materials in an environmental sample, will be used to determine the taxonomic pattern and functional diversity of the microbiome. The research outcome will provide information on agricultural soil microbiome interaction, which might be harnessed to improve crop yield under diverse environmental settings.

Originally from Hong Kong, Rex graduated with a Bachelor of Biomedical Science from Monash University and a Master of Bioinformatics from the University of Melbourne. During a study break, he worked as an intern in the Soil Molecular Ecology Lab on how soil salinity affects the abundance and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes. He is interested in molecular biology and enjoys solving biological questions at a molecular level, in particular those relevant to genetics and signaling pathways. He has experience in bioinformatics, which applies computational skills and statistics to analyse biological data, such as genomics and transcriptomics and is keen to apply these skills to address knowledge gaps in soil molecular biology.