Dr. Yin Li, Associate Professor

College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

Biography

Dr. Yin Li is currently an Associate Professor at College of Life Science & Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, HUST (Wuhan, China). I have been granted several Provincial Young Talent Awards (“Bairen” Program and “Chutian” Program). I am also the deputy director of International Science and Technology Cooperation Base (Genetic Engineering) of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China. I obtained PhD degree in Life Sciences at HUST and accomplished postdoc training at Rutgers University, U.S.A. (Prof. Joachim Messing as my supervisor). I have been studied Poaceae crop genomics and focused on establishing new comparative and evolutionary genomics tools to facilitate reverse-genetic gene discovery related to abiotic stress tolerance and carbohydrate metabolism. I have been awarded for several grants, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Provincial International Science and Technology Cooperation Program. Representative research works have been published on high-impact journals, Journal of Advanced Research, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Food Hydrocolloids, Plant Physiology, etc. I also serve as Editorial Board Member or Youth Editor for several SCI journals, including iMeta, Scientific Data, New Crops, Grain & Oil Science and Technology, and Plants.

Topic

Gene Mining and Functional Studies of Abiotic-Stress Regulatory Genes Facilitate by Evolutionary Genomics in Wheat

Abstract

Reverse genetic studies conducted in the plant with a complex or polyploidy genome enriched with large gene families (like wheat) often meet challenges in identifying the key candidate genes related to important traits and prioritizing the genes for functional experiments. To overcome the above-mentioned challenges of reverse genetics, this work aims to establish an efficient multi-species strategy for genome-wide gene identification and prioritization of the key candidate genes. We established the integrative gene duplication and genome-wide analysis (iGG analysis) as a strategy for pinpointing key candidate genes deserving functional research. The iGG captures the evolution, and the expansion/contraction of large gene families across phylogeny-related species and integrates spatial–temporal expression information for gene function inference. Transgenic approaches were also employed to functional validation. In particular, we leverage the iGG strategy and several QTL/GWAS genetic loci and identified several candidate genes regulating drought stress tolerance in wheat (TaCIPK17, TaPP2C-a5, TaPP2C-a6, and TaDREB26). We used molecular genetics and biochemical approaches to uncover their molecular mechanisms underlying the drought tolerance involvement. This approach and these identified genes provide valuable resource for wheat genetic improvement towards better abiotic stress tolerance.