CURRENT
Principal Investigators:
Ping He
Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics
pinghe@tamu.edu
979-458-1368
Biochemistry & Biophysics faculty link
China Agricultural University, China B.S. 1993
Chinese Academy of sciences, China M.S. 1998
Kansas State University Ph.D. 2003
Harvard Medical School, Boston Postdoc.2003-2008
Joined Texas A&M in 2009
Libo Shan
Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics
lshan@tamu.edu
979-845-8818
Biochemistry & Biophysics faculty link
Beijing Normal University, China B.S. 1995
Chinese Academy of sciences, China M.S. 1998
Kansas State University Ph.D. 2003
Harvard Medical School, Boston Res. Fellow 2003-2008
Joined Texas A&M in 2009
Postdoctoral fellows:
Liang Kong
Email: liangkong2017@tamu.edu
Liang Kong joined the Lab to dissect how plants activate plant defense responses against microorganisms, with a focus on ADP-ribosylation in plant immunity and Fusarium-cotton interaction.
Zunyong Liu
Email: ponderliu@tamu.edu
Zunyong Liu got his Ph.D in Zhejiang University in 2017 and joined the lab in Spring of 2018 as a post-doctoral researcher. His primary research interest is to elucidate the function of Fusarium effectors during Fusarium-cotton interaction.
Jun Liu
Email: liujun93@tamu.edu
Jun Liu is from Sichuan, China. He got his B.S. at XinJiang University, Urumqi and Ph.D. at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou in China. He joined the lab as a post-doc on June in 2018. He interests in the Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs)-mediated signal transduction in plant innate immunity, including plant genetics, protein complexes, phosphorylation and ubiquitination et al. His enjoys fishing.
Junhyeok Kim
Email: jhkim0504@tamu.edu
Junhyeok Kim is from Gyeongju, South Korea. He got his Bachelors, M.S and Ph.D at Korea University. During his Ph.D he studied how plant transcription factors regulate abiotic stress signaling pathway. After finishing his Ph.D. he joined Alex Webb group in Cambridge University as a post-doc to study NAD signaling in circadian clock and abiotic stress. He joined the lab on November 2018 as a poct-doc to work on ADP-ribosylation in plant immunity.
Yan Yan
Email: yanyan-2019@tamu.edu
Yan Yan got his Ph.D in University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016 and spent three years in UC-Davis as a postdoc working on the long-distance signaling transduction in plant. Then he joined our lab in Dec. 2019 as a post-doc research associate. Now, his primary research interest is to illustrate post-transcriptional regulations in plant immunity responses in Arabidopsis.
Fausto Andrés Ortiz-Morea
Email: fandortiz@gmail.com
Dr. Fausto Andrés Ortiz-Morea received a doctorate in plant genetics, biochemistry, and biotechnology jointly supervised by the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and Ghent University (Belgium) in 2015. He is a researcher from Universidad de la Amazonia in Colombia that has received funding from the Pew Latin American Fellows Program in the Biomedical Sciences to do research in conjunction with Texas A&M AgriLife Research. His study will include investigating how plants integrate and execute an immune response against invading pathogens. He will also explore how plants manage to launch a two-tiered immune response when components from each of the separate pathways interact with a common set of receptors. This work could generate significant excitement in understanding the convergent immune signaling against infections in plants and animals.
Incheol Yeo
Email: justinicyeo83@tamu.edu
Incheol is from South Korea and he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Chung-Ang University in Korea. During his M.S. course, he studied the interspecies interaction of antibiotic-producing microorganisms with pathogens. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Texas A&M University where he studied with Dr. Timothy Devarenne working on phytohormone-regulated host plant defense against a bacterial pathogen. He joined the lab in June 2020 as a post-doc. He works on understanding mechanisms of activation for a resistance protein inducing cell death and proteomics of plant immunity proteins.
Dongdong Ge
Email: gedongdong9@163.com
Dongdong Ge joined the lab in Jan. 2019 as a joint PhD student from Nanjing Agricultural University and received his PhD in the fall of 2021. His primary research interest is how pattern recognition receptors (PRRs)-mediated immune signaling at the plasma membrane is monitored by intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat proteins (NLRs).
Lin Zhou
Email: linzhou@tamu.edu
Lin Zhou joined the lab in December of 2018 as a joint Ph.D. student from China Agricultural University and received her PhD in the summer of 2021. Her research interest is cotton abiotic stress, mainly focusing on the role of phosphatase in cotton salt stress response.
Sung-Il Kim
Email: kimsi@tamu.edu
Sung-Il Kim is from Dae-Gu in South Korea. He got a B.S at Kyung Hee university then got M.S and Ph.D at Seoul National University. He joined here in Sep 2021 to understand how plants control RNA alternative splicing in response to biotic stress.
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Yingpeng Xie
Email: yp.xie@tamu.edu
Yingpeng is from Shandong, China. He got his PhD at City University of Hong Kong. During his PhD training, he studied how bacteria infect host plants and cause diseases. He joined the lab as a post-doc on Sep in 2021. His research interest is to illustrate the roles of phytocytokines in regulating plant Immunity.
Jiaxing Liu
Email: jiaxing.liu@ag.tamu.edu
Jiaxing Liu is from Inner Mongolia, China. She got her Ph. D. at China Agricultural University in 2017 and spent two years and a half as a post-doc working on the plant-virus interaction in Texas A&M AgriLife Research. She joined the lab as a visiting post-doc in Oct 2021. Jiaxing interests in mining the working mechanisms of Huanglongbing in citrus plants
Graduate Students:
Brendan Mormile
Email: mormileb@tamu.edu
Brendan joined the lab in the Spring of 2018. Currently, he is developing a virus vector-based delivery system for the components of CRISPR/Cas9. Brendan ultimately plans to use this novel gene editing technique to produce genetically modified cotton plants independent of tissue culture regeneration. Prior to coming to Texas A&M, he completed a B.S in biology from Merrimack College and a M.S in biology from Southern Connecticut State University.
Chao Zhang
Email: zhangchao2010@tamu.edu
Chao Zhang got his Bachelor and Master’s in Plant Pathology at China Agricultural University mainly focusing on studying the interaction between plant host and virus. He is working on the functional analysis of genes involved in plant immunity. Chao is trying to unravel how some genes, which play interesting roles in regulating PAMPs or effector triggered immunity, work in Arabidopsis and cotton. Besides his research, he likes to play sports such as tennis and badminton.
Barbara Rodrigues
Email: bahzinha@tamu.edu
Barbara Rodrigues joined the lab in 2018 as a Ph.D. Student. Her research work is focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying plant cell death and signaling networks in host immunity (Receptor-like kinases and small peptides recognition). Barbara is from Brazil, where she got her Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology and a M.S in Genetics and Biochemistry.
Lahong Xu
Email: xulahong@tamu.edu
Lahong joined the lab in August 2018. She got her Bachelors at Hainan Medical University, and her M.S at Sun Yat-Sen University. Her research interests is scRNA-seq and the applications of Machine Learning in Biology.
Catherine Danmaigona Clement
Email: cdanmaigona@tamu.edu
Catherine is a Ph.D. student in Plant Breeding and Genetics program, working on cotton breeding in affiliation with Dr. Jane Dever and Dr. Steve Hague. She joined the lab in November 2018. Her current research interests are breeding for Fusarium wilt race 4 (Fov4) resistance of cotton using molecular tools and gene editing techniques. Her research focuses on de novo genome assembly and annotation, comparative and functional genomics of fungal wilt pathogens of cotton. Her research also involves identification of Fov4 R-genes and Avr genes by Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS).
Suji Ye
Email: sjyei0721@tamu.edu
Suji joined the lab in Fall 2020 as a Ph.D student. She received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Kyungpook National University in South Korea. During Master’s course, she studied metabolic engineering in food biotechnology. She works on understanding mechanism of plant cell death and signaling protein.
Rachel Rivero
Email: rachelcrivero@tamu.edu
Rachel is from Austin, TX and joined the lab in Spring 2021 as a PhD student. Her work is focused on exploring the bio-production potentials and elucidating the asexual reproduction process of Kalanchoe daigremontiana. She received a B.S. in Resource & Environmental Studies at Texas State University in 2017. Apart from her research, she enjoys spending time with her cat.
Alexis Schultz
Email: aschultz21@tamu.edu
Alexis joined the lab in fall of 2021 and is a master’s student in the Plant Breeding and Genetics program. Her research is centered around breeding cotton for resistance to Fusarium wilt race 4. Prior to coming to Texas, she received her B.S. in Agronomy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Miguel Rodriguez
Email: rodriguez.migs10@tamu.edu
Miguel received his B.S. in microbiology from the University of Houston-Downtown in 2018. He joined the lab as a PhD candidate in the fall of 2020. He is interested in the involvement of pathogen-triggered immunity (PTI) response to virus infection. His research centers on the molecular and biochemical mechanism of how receptor-like kinases and proteins are involved in virus resistance, particularly in sensing viral nucleic acids and the relationship with RNAi-mediated anti-virus defense.
Hazen Keinath
Email: hjkeinath@tamu.edu
Hazen joined the lab in Fall 2021 as a PhD student in the Molecular & Environmental Plant Science program. Previously, he conducted his B.S. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and M.S. in Biological Sciences at Michigan Technological University, focusing in plant biotechnology and bioenergy applications. Now, his research is interested in uncovering plant sensing and signaling responses in regards to fungal infection.
Staff:
Ali Nabhani
Email: anabhani100@tamu.edu
Ali joined the lab in the summer of 2020 as the lab manager, prior to which he graduated from TAMU in the spring of 2020 having double-majored in biochemistry and genetics. He hopes to escape the Texas humidity and go on to graduate school somewhere in the northeast. Besides research and lab work, he’s a devoted boxer at the Bryan Boxing Club and enjoys telling himself that he will actually adopt a dog one day.
Eun-Gyu No
Email: e-no@tamu.edu
Eun-Gyu (Eugene) joined the lab in the fall of 2020 as a senior scientist. His research focuses on Fusarium (Fov) whole genome sequencing and GWAS on cotton response to Fov. He is also interested in instrumentation and technology development for image-based plant disease phenotyping. He got B.S. in Plant pathology from Seoul National University, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Plant Physiology and Molecular Science from Texas A&M University. He worked a core lab manager in the Norman Borlaug Center for 18 years prior to joining the lab.
Addison Frese
Email: addizero@tamu.edu
Addison joined the lab in the summer of 2021 as a student worker and transitioned to a lab tech after graduating with a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences in the fall of 2021. Addison works on the PFOS project which is trying to identify ecotypes of Arabidopsis that can act as phytoremediators to remove these chemicals from the soil. He is hoping to join a biochemistry graduate program in the near future.
Undergraduates:
Lauren Kearns
Email: kearnsla@tamu.edu
Lauren Kearns is from Houston, TX and joined the lab in Fall 2021 as an undergraduate researcher. She is currently studying biochemistry with minors in Spanish and business, and after her time at Texas A&M, she hopes to attend graduate school for genetic counseling. In addition to science, Lauren also enjoys kayaking, hiking, and drawing.
Tengyang (Taylor) Wu
Email: taylorwu@tamu.edu
Tengyang Wu is from Houston, TX and joined the lab in Fall 2021 as an undergraduate researcher. She is currently studying biochemistry and hoping to join a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company after graduation. During her free time, she enjoys traveling, dancing, and reading.
Madison Ellis
Email: madison.ellis10@tamu.edu
Madison Ellis is from Dallas, TX and joined the lab in Fall 2021 as an undergraduate researcher. She is currently studying horticulture and biochemistry and hoping to attend graduate school for plant biology after graduation. During her free time she enjoys reading, painting, gardening and cooking.
Jagger Butler
Email: jagger.butler@tamu.edu
Jagger Butler joined the lab in January of 2022 as the lab’s glassware extraordinaire, but will soon be joining as an undergraduate researcher. He is studying cellular and molecular biology and is from Oceanside, California. After he graduates with a bachelor’s, he plans on attending graduate school. When he isn’t studying, Jagger enjoys swimming, surfing, hiking, and cooking.
Reed Rivera
