Tong Li: Plant Physiology First Author

Tong Li, first author of “Conserved non-coding sequences and de novo Mutator insertion alleles are imprinted in maize”

Current Position:

Postdoctoral researcher, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Education:

Ph.D., China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Visiting Ph.D. student, Miami University, Ohio, USA

B.S., China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Non-scientific Interests:

Swimming, skiing, tennis, hiking

Brief bio:

Based on a background of genetics and botany during undergraduate courses, I became interested in epigenetic regulation of crops using bioinformatics approaches, and worked on the genetic and epigenetic regulation of imprinted genes during my Ph.D. study in China Agricultural University. During my Ph.D., I got the opportunity to be a visiting student in Dr. Meixia Zhao’s laboratory at Miami University of United States. We developed a project that used newly silenced Mutator transposons and created two potentially novel imprinted genes. When entering the post-doctoral phase, I extended my research scope to assemble and understand the genomes of non-model plant species, such as sheep grass and wild peas, to dig out their values for animal husbandry and ecology. In the future, I will continue to explore the genomics and epi-genomics of plants using cutting edge bioinformatics technologies.