Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jun Yuan is a plant ecologist and molecular plant scientist whose research investigates how plants perceive, respond to, and adapt to environmental variation. Her work integrates plant physiology, ecology, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and comparative genomics to uncover adaptive mechanisms under abiotic stress, with a strong focus on heavy metal stress in medicinal plants. She has contributed significant insights into cadmium resistance, revealing how metabolic regulation, transcription factors, and gene expression networks mediate stress tolerance and influence the synthesis of bioactive compounds. In addition, her comparative chloroplast genome and phylogenomic studies advance understanding of plant evolution and systematics across diverse taxa. Through interdisciplinary approaches that bridge ecological processes with molecular mechanisms, her research supports environmental risk assessment, medicinal plant safety, and the development of stress-resilient plant resources, strengthening the scientific basis for sustainable utilization of plants under changing environmental conditions.
