PhD student Qi Guo wins SCU honour for her research

International PhD student Qi Guo wins Southern Cross University’s Chancellor’s Medal for research on plant salinity.

A research breakthrough in understanding how plants resist salinity has won the Chancellor’s Medal for Chinese PhD student Qi Guo at Southern Cross University.

Dr Guo, who was presented with the award at a graduation ceremony on Thursday, said receiving the honour was the best gift which she, as a student, could give her supervisors.

“It’s the best acknowledgment for all the hard work I put in during my PhD,” she said.

The Chancellor’s Medal is the university’s highest accolade for an outstanding thesis.

Her research identified one of the mechanisms used by a particular salt tolerant plant to help regulate the uptake of salinity from the soil.

Dr Guo studied a salt tolerant plant, commonly known as the ice plant, which is originally from South Africa, but well established in Australia.

Her goal was to understand the molecular mechanism which the ice plant uses to withstand salt. She focused on the plants membranes, mainly composed of lipids and proteins, using specialised equipment at SCU’s Lismore campus which can analyse specimens of the ice plant measuring a millionth of a millimetre.

“These membranes surround the organelles (parts of a cell which perform various functions) and cell itself and are very important because they are the first line of defence for the plants against salt stress. They function to sense and transfer the signals from the external environment into the cell to trigger mechanisms which help limit the uptake of excessive sodium and chloride ions from the soil,” Dr Guo said.

“The result of my studies indicated that one of the mechanisms used by this plant to tolerate salt is by regulating its membrane lipid composition. Hopefully these new molecular features can be developed as bio-markers which can be used to improve the salt tolerance of crop plants in the future.”

Dr Guo’s PhD supervisor, SCU’s associate dean of research Bronwyn Barkla, said her work was significant.

“Focusing on the lipids is a relatively new approach and we are just learning how important these molecules are in signalling and regulation within the cell,” Professor Barkla said.

Dr Guo came to Australia five years ago to start her PhD after completing a bachelors and masters degree in China. She plans to continue working at Southern Cross University as a research assistant.