Xiaotian Wang: The Plant Cell First Author Profile
Xiaotian Wang, co-first author of “Antagonistic regulation of target genes by the SISTER OF TM3–JOINTLESS2 complex in tomato inflorescence branching”
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangzhou, China
Education: Ph.D. in the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
Non-scientific Interests: Mountaineering and travelling
Brief bio: My scientific experience started at the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where I joined Prof. Xia Cui’s lab in 2017 and got my Ph.D degree in 2021. My work was mainly focused on identifying new inflorescence regulators by forward genetics and investigating the mechanism underlying inflorescence branching development, with the aim to improving yield by precisely regulating the number of inflorescence branches in tomato. I have identified the QTL, qMIB1 (QTL for multiple inflorescence branch 1) to positively control tomato inflorescence-branching number, which encodes STM3, a homolog of Arabidopsis thaliana SOC1. Together with Mr. Liu and Mr. Bai, we reveal an antagonistic regulatory mode through which STM3 and J2 (negative regulator) exert flexible control of inflorescence meristem determinacy and branch number using standard molecular techniques (ChIP-seq analysis, EMSA, Co-IP, etc) combined with a large suite of mutants. In our future work, we will focus on exploring the environmental adaptability of inflorescence development and hope to get more interesting findings in this field.
