Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: Yan Bao

Yan Bao, first author of A functional unfolded protein response is required for normal vegetative development in Arabidopsis

Name: Yan Bao

Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher Associate, Michigan State University

Education: PhD, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; BS, Huazhong Agricultural University, China

Non-scientific Interests: Running, fishing, traveling

Brief bio:

My interests in biology stem from my days in high school. I thought that doing science was cool and a fun thing to do. After studying plant science in college, I wanted to pursue graduate studies in this area. The question of how plants communicate with the environment kept me busy during my PhD when I was studying how plants respond to drought.

After graduation in 2014, I moved to Iowa State University to study ER-stress and autophagy as a postdoc.  While there, I discovered that the ribonuclease activity of IRE1B promotes autophagy by degrading the RNAs encoding proteins that hold autophagy in check. Meanwhile, I identified an interesting 17ab triple mutant and showed how plants use a system associated with stress responses to support normal growth.

Now I am studying tocopherol (also known as Vitamin E) biosynthesis at Michigan State, doing GWAS with large-scale data collected by applying HPLC and LC-MS.