ABOUT ME

Education

• 2015   PhD   Northwest A&F University, Pomology

• 2013-2015   Visiting Student   Boyce Thompson Institute, Bioinformatics

• 2009    BS    Northwest A&F University, Grape and wine engineering

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Professional Experience

2015 – 2020    Postdoctoral researcher,    Boyce Thompson Institute,

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Research Interests

• Plant Evolutionary Biology: A long-standing question in plant evolutionary biology is the nature of key pre-adaptations, or exaptations, and the adaptive traits that allowed the first colonizers to survive the challenges of life on land. Our attempt to understand such a big question was set in motion by multi-disciplinary efforts, which focused on comparative genomics of different green plant lineages coupled with biochemical and cytological evidences. With the explosion of genomic data in every single lineage of green plants, it will be interesting to identify key regulatory/metabolic networks that may play central roles in water-to-land transition of life.       

• Plant population genetics:  crop improvement is a constant need in modern breeding due to global environment changes and expansion of new markets where crops need to adapt to. Identification of key genes controlling favorable traits in germplasm serves as the central task in crop improvement. We have been using population genetics approach to explore potential gene candidates for spinach breeding and I have the same interest in other crops.

• Plant epigenetics: It is now increasingly clear that epigenome dynamics plays critical and early regulatory roles in many biological processes in plants, such as fruit riping and disease response. We have performed lots of epigenome studies in tomato and are enthusiastic to extend our model to different crops.

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