Yinping Jiao, Ph.D.

Background

Prior to joining the Tech faculty, Jiao served as an a computational postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology. She also worked as a research associate with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

Her bachelor's degree in biotechnology is from Shandong Agricultural University in Shandong, China. Her doctorate in plant genetics and breeding is from China Agricultural University in Beijing, China.

Research Interests

Jiao's research is devoted to using genomics approaches to obtain a deeper understanding of the genetic diversity and regulatory mechanisms of important agronomical traits, with the goal of facilitating breeding.

Agriculture is facing a myriad of challenges related to climate change and rapidly growing global populations. Genetics and genomics are the foundation of molecular plant breeding, which is an essential strategy for enhancing our current and future food security and agricultural sustainability. Jiao's research covers two broad areas:

1. Identification of genes and pathways that control important agronomic traits, and
2. Exploring how genetic variation and genome structure contribute to diverse morphologies to expand the adaption of cultivated crops to climate change.

Selected Publications

Jiao Y, Lee Y, Gladman N, Chopra R, Christensen S, Regulski M, Burow G, Hayes C, Burke J, Ware D, Xin Z. MSD1 regulates pedicellate spikelet fertility through the jasmonic acid pathway in sorghum. Nature Communications. 2018, 9: 822.

Jiao Y, Burow G, Gladman N, Acosta-Martinez V, Chen J, Burke J, Ware D, Xin Z. Efficient identification of causal mutations through sequencing of bulked F2 from two allelic bloomless mutants of sorghum bicolor. Frontiers in plant science, 2018, 8 (2267).

Sun S, Zhou Y, Chen J, Shi J, Zhao H, Zhao H, Song W, Zhang M, Cui Y, Dong X, Liu H, Ma X, Jiao Y, Wang B, Wei X, Stein JC, Glaubitz JC, Lu F, Yu G, Liang C, Fengler K, Li B, Rafalski A, Schnable PS, Ware DH, Buckler ES, Lai J. Extensive intraspecific gene order and gene structural variations between Mo17 and other maize genomes. Nature Genetics. 2018

Jiao Y, Peluso P, Shi J, Liang T, Stitzer MC, Wang B, Campbell MS, Stein JC, Wei X, Chin CS, Guill K, Regulski M, Kumari S, Olson A, Gent J, Schneider KL, Wolfgruber TK, May MR, Springer NM, Antoniou E, McCombie WR, Presting GG, McMullen M, Ross-Ibarra J, Dawe RK, Hastie A, Rank DR, Ware D. Improved maize reference genome with single-molecule technologies. Nature. 2017;546(7659):524-7.

Jiao Y, Burke J, Chopra R, Burow G, Chen J, Wang B, Hayes C, Emendack Y, Ware D, Xin Z. A Sorghum Mutant Resource as an Efficient Platform for Gene Discovery in Grasses. The Plant Cell. 2016;28(7):1551-62.

Monaco MK, Stein J, Naithani S, Wei S, Dharmawardhana P, Kumari S, Amarasinghe V, Youens-Clark K, Thomason J, Preece J, Pasternak S, Olson A, Jiao Y, Lu Z, Bolser D, Kerhornou A, Staines D, Walts B, Wu G, D'Eustachio P, Haw R, Croft D, Kersey PJ, Stein L, Jaiswal P, Ware D. Gramene 2013: comparative plant genomics resources. Nucleic Acids Research. 2014;42(Database issue):D1193-9.

Jiao Y, Zhao H, Ren L, Song W, Zeng B, Guo J, Wang B, Liu Z, Chen J, Li W, Zhang M, Xie S, Lai J. Genome-wide genetic changes during modern breeding of maize. Nature Genetics. 2012;44(7):812-5.

Zhang M, Zhao H, Xie S, Chen J, Xu Y, Wang K, Zhao H, Guan H, Hu X, Jiao Y, Song W, Lai J. Extensive, clustered parental imprinting of protein-coding and noncoding RNAs in developing maize endosperm. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011;108(50):20042-7.

Jiao Y, Song W, Zhang M, Lai J. Identification of novel maize miRNAs by measuring the precision of precursor processing. BMC Plant Biology. 2011;11:141.