About the Lab - pursuing the best research of aphid development (追求卓越的蚜蟲發育學研究)

(Photograph: Shipher Wu; Pea Aphids: Gee-way Lin and Chun-che Chang)

• The Laboratory for Genetics and Development at the National Taiwan University (LGD@NTU) was established in April 2004 in the Department of Entomology NTU. It is the first laboratory studying embryonic development in the Department and perhaps the first lab focusing on developmental diversity in Taiwan. The LGD@NTU is led by Dr. Chun-che Chang, a scientist who was initiated his interest on developmental biology by Professor Michael Akam at the University of Cambridge.

• We aim to establish the pea aphid as a model organism for genomic and developmental studies. In the past few years we have developed molecular tools for studying aphid oogenesis and embryogenesis. We found how germ cells are specified and how they are migrating during embryogenesis in the parthenogenetic pea aphid. Recently we extended our studies to the axis determination, segmentation, and organogenesis. Current projects include egg polarity, development of germline stem cells, germline specification, and developmental signaling in both asexual and sexual pea aphids.

Group Leader: Chun-che Chang, Ph.D., Cantab.

Chun-che Chang obtained his BSc (Agricultural Chemistry) and MSc (Biochemistry) in 1990 and 1992, respectively, from the National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei, Taiwan. He obtained full scholarship from the Taiwan Government to study in the University of Cambridge from Octover 1996 and received his Ph.D. in 2001 from the Department of Genetics, working on germline development in the grasshopper Schistocerca gregaria under the supervision of Professor Michael Akam. After his Ph.D., he then went to the Laboratory of Professor and Sir Alec Jeffreys in Leicester University, working on meiotic recombination in the human. Being attracted by the beauty of embryos, he returned back to the field of Developmental Biology and studied gonadogenesis in zebrafish in the Lab of Professor Bon-chu Chung at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Academia Sinica (Taipei) till July 2003. From August 2003, he became an assistant professor at the Department of Entomology NTU, where he is working. In August 2009 he was promoted as an associate professor and he was further promoted as a full professor in August 2014. Currently he is also an adjunct faculty member of: (1) Institute of Biotechnology; (2) Genome and Systems Biology Degree Program; and (3) Research Center for Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the NTU. Chun-che Chang is an active member of the International Aphid Genomics Consortium.