News

Fellow of American Society of Plant Biologists Award

AUSTIN, Texas, August, 2023. A Molecular Biosciences Faculty Member was awarded an American Society of Plant Biologists’ award. Read full story.

Genomes Assembled from Five Cotton Species Could Lead to Better Varieties

AUSTIN, Texas, April 20, 2020. Cotton producers in Texas, elsewhere in the US and around the world are looking for new varieties that can better withstand droughts, pests and pathogens, yet yield higher-quality fibers for the textile industry. To help accelerate the breeding and improvement of cotton varieties, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere teamed up to produce the reference-grade genomes of all five species, including two cultivated cottons. Their results were published in the journal Nature Genetics. Read full stories from NSF, Texas AgriLife, and HudsonAlphA.

Researchers Create Largest Ever Map of Plant Proteins and Their Assemblies

AUSTIN, Texas, April 2, 2020. In a new paper in Cell, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin offer the largest survey to date of proteins in plants, examining 13 different species across 1.1 billion years of plant evolution. Their findings could have practical applications such as increasing crop yields, understanding disease and stress resistance in plants and informing biofuel production. Read full story.

Scientists Uncover RNA Silencing Technique to Change Seed Size in Plants

AUSTIN, Texas, January 28, 2019. In a development with promising implications for crop farmers in the U.S. and around the world, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have figured out how to get some plants to produce nearly one-third bigger seeds. Read full story and article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biologists Find Day and Night Pathways Regulating Plant Growth Vigor

AUSTIN, Texas, May 7, 2018. Scientists are slowly unravelling the complex molecular pathways that regulate growth vigor in plant hybrids, with the goal of eventually developing hybrid crops that can grow faster and more productively, while at the same time doing a better job of resisting stress such as heat, drought and pests. Many crops such as corn are grown as hybrids for better yield and traits. Read full story and article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

First Step Taken Toward Epigenetically Modified Cotton

AUSTIN, Texas, May 31, 2017 — With prices down and weather patterns unpredictable, these are tough times for America’s cotton farmers, but new research led by Z. Jeffrey Chen at The University of Texas at Austin might offer a break for the industry. He and a team have taken the first step toward a new way of breeding heartier, more productive cotton through a process called epigenetic modification. Read full story and article in the journal Genome Biology.

Upland cotton: an improved sequence will advance fiber, fuel and food applications

April 11, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire: A consortium led by Z. Jeffrey Chen of The University of Texas at Austin and Jane Grimwood and Jeremy Schmutz of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology has made publicly available a significantly improved high-quality genome sequence of Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum). This sequence of the species making up greater than 90% of the world’s spinnable cotton fiber builds upon previous genome sequences published in the past five years. The data is downloadable at DOE JGI Phytozome. Read full story.

April 20, 2015

A University of Texas at Austin scientist, working with an international research team, has developed the most precise sequence map yet of U.S. cotton and will soon create an even more detailed map for navigating the complex cotton genome. Read Full Story. The research in the USA team is supported by  NSF and Cotton Incorporated. Read more

June 3, 2013

In 2008, Jeff Chen caused a stir in the world of plant biology when he identified a key mechanism of “hybrid vigor” in the common experimental plant, Arabidopsis. Now, thanks to NSF…he and his colleagues are expanding their investigation of hybrid vigor to corn, which is the biggest crop in the United States. Advances in understanding hybrid vigor in corn could lead to big increases in yield. Read Full Story.

September 16, 2012

Congratulations to Danny Ng, who is now an Assistant Professor of Biology at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Read more

April 11, 2012

Seed size is controlled by small RNA molecules inherited from a plant’s mother, a discovery from scientists at the University of Texas at Austin that has implications for agriculture and understanding plant evolution. NSF News from the Field and 
Read more

December 20, 2011

Jeff Chen is elected as a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In November 2011, the AAAS Council elected 539 members as AAAS Fellows. These individuals will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows
Read more

November 9, 2010

Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge – Plant geneticist Z. Jeff Chen has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to work at the University of
Read more

September 15, 2010

Cotton Fiber Genomics – Dr. Z. Jeffrey Chen and his colleagues will use next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to study the genomics of fiber production in cotton, the largest source of natural and renewable fiber in the world, with a $3.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Read full story.

May 22-23, 2009

Misook Ha doctoral convocation was held on May 23, proceeded by Vikram Agarwal undergraduate convocation on May 22. Misook will work on computational and statistical analysis of gene expression and chromatin data in polyploids. Vikram graduated with several prestigious awards, including a predoctoral fellowship award from the NSF. He will attend the graduate school at MIT in Fall 2009. Congratulations!
Read more

January 27, 2009

Misook Ha published a first-author paper, entitled “Duplicate genes increase expression diversity in closely related species and allopolyploids” in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS). Congratulations!
Read more

January 15, 2009

Dr. Zhongfu Ni, a former postdoctoral fellow and visiting scientist from China Agricultural University, Beijing, and Eun-Deok Kim, a current Ph.D. student in Plant Biology, were co-first authors of a recent discovery in the Chen Laboratory that reveals how plants grow bigger and more vigorously through changes in their internal clocks. The work was published in the journal Nature. Nature highlighted the work in the subtitle of the cover (Hybrid Vigour – Plants seize the day) and featured the research in the Authors page Abstractions and in the Podcast (Big Plants). Nature Review Genetics featured the Research Highlight “Plant Development: Growing with Time”. BBC World Service aired a segment on 5-7 December 2008.

December 19, 2008

The third-floor lunch party attracted over 40 students, postdocs, and staff members from the Chen lab, Pierce-Shimomura lab, Sullivan lab, Trent lab, and Whiteley lab, all housed in the third floor of the Neural and Molecular Sciences (NMS) Building.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Read more

December 4, 2008

Misook Ha graduated in December 2009 with a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology track). She will work as a postdoctoral fellow in Computational Biology on elucidating the mechanisms for expression evolution in Arabidopsis
Read more

November 24, 2008

Circadian Rhythms and Hybrid Vigor – Hybrid plants, like corn, grow bigger and better than their parents because many of their genes for photosynthesis and starch metabolism are more active during the day, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin in a new
Read more

November 21, 2008

The annual Cotton Fiber Genomics project meeting was held in Austin. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and focused on “Genetic and Functional Genomic Analysis of Early Events in Cotton Fiber Development”. The attendees of the meeting include:
PI: Chen Lab (David Pang, Yuki Guan, Misook Ha, Vikram Agarwal, UT-Austin)
Co-PI: Triplett Lab (He Jim Kim, Doug Hinchliffe, USDA-ARS/UNO)
Co-PI: David Stelly (Shivapriya Manchali, Texas A&M)
Co-PI: Peggy Thaxton (Mississippi
Read more