Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors: Lian-Huan Wei
first author of The m6A Reader ECT2 Controls Trichome Morphology by Affecting mRNA Stability in Arabidopsis
Current Position: PhD student in the Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University.
Education: PhD in Chemical Biology at the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University. BS in Chemical Biology at Northwest University.
Non-scientific Interests: Running, rock climbing, hiking, diving, badminton,reading, watching movies. I felt so excited when I first came across the concept of epitranscriptomics. I am so lucky to be studying the epitranscriptomic mark m6A under the supervision of Prof. Chuan He and Prof. Guifang Jia, who are pioneers in this field. Expanding research on m6A in plants can deepen our understanding of m6A function. I proved that ECT2 is an m6A reader protein in Arabidopsis and identified more than 3,000 endogenous mRNA substrates for ECT2 by developing a new method named FA-CLIP. I will further study the mechanism underlying how ECT2 affects mRNA and hope to increase our understanding of m6A.
