Dr. Lim is an associate professor at the School of Biological Sciences, HKU. He had completed his B.Sc. (Biochemistry) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1990, and had obtained his D. Phil (Biochemistry) from the University of Oxford in 1994.
By employing an ATP sensor to study the dynamic changes of ATP concentration in planta, his recent researches have revised previous understandings on plant chloroplast bioenergetics, including: how the demand and supply of ATP and NADPH are balanced during photosynthesis; how cooperation of chloroplasts and mitochondria optimizes photosynthesis (Quantitative Plant Biology, 2021); and how chloroplasts conserve energy at night (PNAS, 2018; National Science Review, 2019).
His group also introduced a NADPH and NADH/NAD+ ratio sensors to plants in order to study photosynthesis and photorespiration and showed that photorespiration generates a huge amount of NADH in mitochondria, and the surplus reducing equivalents have to be exported from mitochondria (Nature Communications, 2020). By employing these in planta sensors, his group has resolved a debate on whether guard cell chloroplasts carry photosynthesis (Nature Communications, 2022).
Mitochondria is also a subject of his studies. His group showed that, similar to the transit peptides of some chloroplast proteins, the presequences of some mitochondrial protein are also phosphorylated at particular Ser/Thr resided (FIPS, 2018). Opposite to the phosphorylation of transit peptides, which was previously shown to enhance chloroplast protein import, phosphorylation of the pre sequence of a mitochondrial protein impedes its import process (Plant Physiology, 2015).
To date, Dr. Lim has published 76 journal articles with > 4700 citations.
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Publications