Name:Xing, Qian

Degree:Ph.D.

Title:Associate Professor

E-mail:Q.Xing@nefu.edu.cn；

Address:Northeast Forestry University, Shaw (Yifu) Teaching Building, Room 507

Education and Training:

2000 - 2004, B.Sc. in Biology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

2004 - 2007, M.Sc. in Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

2007 - 2012, Ph.D. in Molecular Plant Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Employment:

2012 - 2013 Postdoctoral researcher, University of Bonn, Germany

2014 - 2015 Guest researcher, Lab of Plant Developmental Epigenetics Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany

2015 - now Associate Professor, Department of Genetics/Department of Development Biology, College of Biological Sciences, Northeast Forestry University, P. R. China

Research Speciality:

l Plant related work: Experienced in performing general molecular biology and plant research, such as screens of plant populations, cell culture, genetic transfections, construction of transgenic plant lines including inducible lines, RNA in situ hybridizations, qRT-PCR, global gene expression profiling, western blot, TUNEL essays, microscopies, statistics and etc.

l Animal related work: Isolation of immune cells from mouse lymphoid tissues and human PBMCs by positive selection, depletion and flow cytometry cell sorting; manipulation of ex vivo T-cell activation and suppression; designing multiple color flow cytometry essays to access T-cell activation associated cell surface markers and lineage TFs; performing promoter reporter assays and gene silencing using siRNA, lentiviral delivery system; performing gain- and loss-of-function experiments using miRNA inhibitors and mimics, as well as gene expression and protein analysis using q-PCR, NGS, immunoblotting and flow cytometry.

Courses to Teach:

Plant Molecular Biology (for postgraduate students), Practical Courses in Genetics (for undergraduate students)

Research Interest:

In multicellular organisms, epigenetic mechanisms provide stable gene expression patterns that enable the formation of diverse tissues and whole organs like leaves and flowers. Epigenetic modifications of chromatin are hot topics in studying the memory of plants at cellular level, as they can maintain stable patterns of gene expression in response to transient environmental signals. Therefore, research subjects in our group are divided into two main aspects: Development and Stress.

l Development: Several major epigenetic regulators provide cells a developmental

“memory” of on/off states of genes by histone residue modifications of their loci. Our interests mainly focus on the role of Polycomb-group (PcG) proteins, in early flower and leaf development and dissecting the spatiotemporal expression patterns of developmental regulators which are correlating with changes of the epigenetic marks. We are keen to generate state-of-the-art tools, affording cell-type specific analysis and allow us to dissect the spatiotemporal patterns of the chromatin marks and gene expression during early flower and leaf development. We are also interested in integrating whole genome approaches in the dissection of the temporal pattern changes and exploring cell-type specific analysis which allow us to study the spatial patterns of the chromatin marks and gene expression during early leaf and flower development.

l Stress: We are interested in deciphering molecular mechanisms to transfer intrinsic and extrinsic clues in epigenetic information, and developing different strategies to identify components and antagonists as well as new targets of the Pc-G pathways in response to environmental signals.

Funding:

(1)“5211” “Young Backbone” Program Starting Grant (QG-2015-01) (P.I.)

09/01/2015 – 08/31/2019

(2) Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang, China (C2016007) (P.I.)

07/01/2016 – 07/01/2019

Title: Dissection of the Spatiotemporal Patterns of Polycomb Function during Leaf Development

(3) The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2572016DA03) (P.I.)

03/01/201 – 02/28/2019

Title: The Role of Arabidopsis PcG Proteins in Regulating Leaf Development

Publications: (Selected)

l Xing, Q., Creff, A., Waters, A., Tanaka, H., Goodrich, J., & Ingram, G. C. (2013). ZHOUPI controls embryonic cuticle formation via a signalling pathway involving the subtilisin protease ABNORMAL LEAF-SHAPE1 and the receptor kinases GASSHO1 and GASSHO2. Development, 140(4), 770-779. doi: 10.1242/dev.088898.

l Müller-Xing, R., Xing, Q*. and Goodrich, J. (2014). Footprints of the Sun: Memory of UV and Light Stress in Plants. Frontiers in PLANT SCIENCE 5:474. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2014.00474.

*Co-first author. Invited Review.