Yanqi Wang, council member

About my research

Plants continuously adjust their gene expression to cope with environmental stresses such as heat and salinity. These responses are closely associated with changes in chromatin, including histone modifications, R-loop formation and chromatin accessibility.

In my research, I develop and apply second- and third-generation sequencing methods to investigate how plant chromatin responds to environmental stress. We developed plant multiplexed ChIP-seq (mChIP-seq) to efficiently profile multiple histone modifications from limited amounts of tissue. We study the relationships among histone modifications, R-loops and gene expression in Arabidopsis and tomato under salt stress. We also apply Fiber-seq to investigate chromatin accessibility and nucleosome organization in crops such as rice and soybean. A particular focus of my research is the crosstalk between stress-responsive transcription factors, especially WRKY33, and epigenetic modifications.

Ultimately, my research aims to reveal both conserved and species-specific mechanisms by which plants regulate chromatin to adapt to environmental stress.