Dr. Liu received his PhD in John Innes Centre / University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, United Kingdom, in 1996, and did his postdoc studies in Prof. David Meinke’s lab in Oklahoma State University from 1996 to 1999, and worked as a Section Leader/Senior Scientist from 1990 to 2005 in Plant Research International, University of Wageningen, Netherlands. He returned to China in 2005 to set up the Research Center for Signal Transduction & Metabolomics at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. From 2016 to 2020, he worked as the Director General for the Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China. He was appointed as the Dean of the School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, Peking University, in 2020. 
He has been working on seed development for over 30 years. The aim of his research group is to understand seed development in different plant species by using molecular genetic tools, to elucidate genes and molecular machinery underlying endosperm and embryo development. Currently, his major focus is on rice endosperm development, with a primary interest to improve the nutrition of rice. 
He was the Vice-President of Chinese Society of Cell Biology from 2006 to 2016, and Vice-President and Secretary-General of Chinese Society of Crop Sciences from 2016 to now. In addition, he also served as an Advisory Board Member for Journal of Experimental Botany from 2007 to 2009, and the Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Integrative Plant Biology (JIPB) from 2007-2017, and from 2022 to now, he served as Field Chief Editor for Frontiers in Plant Science.

Selected recent publications

1. Wu MW et al., 2022, Transcription factors NAC20 and NAC26 interact with RPBF to activate albumin accumulations in rice endosperm. Plant Biotech J.

2. Liu JX et al., 2022. Cereal endosperms: development and storage product accumulations. Ann Rev Plant Biol.

3. Song XF and C-M Liu*, 2022, CLE peptides: critical regulators for stem cell maintenance in plants, Planta.

4. Li DQ et al., 2021. Defective mitochondrial function by mutation in THICK ALEURONE 1 encoding a mitochondrion-targeted single-stranded DNA binding protein leads to increased aleurone cell layers and improved nutrition in rice. Mol Plant.

5. Hou XL et al., 2021. DEAD-BOX RNA HELICASE 27 regulates microRNA biogenesis, zygote division and stem cell homeostasis. Plant Cell.

6. Ren SC et al., 2019. CLE25 peptide regulates phloem initiation in Arabidopsis through a CLERK‐CLV2 receptor complex. JIPB.

7. Liu JX et al. (2018) Mutation in the DNA demethylase OsROS1 result in a thickened aleurone and improved nutritional value in rice grains. PNAS.

8. Guo L et al. (2018) ANAPHASE PROMOTING COMPLEX/CYCLOSOME-mediated cyclin B1 degradation is critical for cell cycle synchronization in syncytial endosperms. JIPB.

9. Bai AN et al., 2016. NF-YB1-regulated expression of sucrose transporters in aleurone facilitates sugar loading to rice endosperm. Cell Research.