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    Sorghum variety BTx642 grown in Central Valley at temperatures around 100 degrees for 65 days without water. It is still green and filling grain to almost the same extent as plants that were watered weekly. (Jeffrey Dahlberg, UC ANR Agricultural Research and Extension Center)
    Dealing with Drought: Uncovering Sorghum’s Secrets
    Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench is an African grass that adroitly handles droughts, floods and poor soils. This is the first paper that describes sorghum’s response to drought, from a large-scale field experiment led by a multi-institutional consortium to uncover the mechanisms behind sorghum’s capacity to produce high yields despite drought conditions.

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    The lichen Gray’s Cup (Cladonia grayi), with its namesake goblet structures. (Thomas Barlow)
    Making a Lichen Together
    Despite a century-and-a-half of lichen research, many details of lichen symbiosis remain unclear. For the first time, a team has analyzed in parallel the genomes and transcriptomes of both partners to better understand lichen.

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    Poplar cuttings inoculated with M. elongata strain PM193 (far right) grow larger in 30 percent forest soil / 70 percent sand than without PM193 (middle). On the left are controls grown in sterile sand. (Chih-Ming Hsu)
    Fungus Fuels Tree Growth
    Poplar is the fastest growing hardwood tree in the western United States, making it an energy feedstock of particular interest to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The fungus is almost always found among and within poplar trees, and in an effort to understand its influence on the plant, a team of scientists studied what happens to the tree’s physical traits and gene expression when the fungus is present.

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    Jorge Rodrigues is interested in the biological causes of methane flux variation in the Amazon rainforest. (Courtesy of Jorge Rodrigues)
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    Wetlands are the single largest global source of atmospheric methane. This project aims to integrate microbial and tree genetic characteristics to measure and understand methane emissions at the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

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    Vampirovibrio chlorellavorus in yellow on green host. (Courtesy of Judith Brown)
    Infections and Host-Pathogen Interactions of Chlorella
    The non-photosynthetic, predatory cyanobacterium Vampirovibrio chlorellavorus is a globally important obligate pathogen of Chlorella species/strains, which are of interest as biofuel feedstocks.

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    Morphological diversity of Sordariales growing in the lab. Pierre Gladieux's proposal explores functional diversity in Neurospora and its relatives. (Pierre Gladieux, INRA Montpellier)
    Insights into Functional Diversity in Neurospora
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    Click on the image above or click here (https://youtu.be/iSEEw4Vs_B4) to watch a CRISPR Whiteboard Lesson from the Innovative Genomics Institute, this one focuses on the PAM sequence.
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    Left to Right: Rex Malmstrom, Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh, and Simon Roux.
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Home › Blog › Meet a JGI Postdoc: Ping-Hung Hsieh

September 20, 2019

Meet a JGI Postdoc: Ping-Hung Hsieh

From September 16-20, 2019, we introduce you to some of the postdocs at the JGI in honor of National Postdoc Appreciation Week, which recognizes the contributions of these early career researchers. Through a series of hard-hitting questions, we find out what drives each one.

 

NPAW 2019 JGI postdoc Ping-Hung Hsieh

What are you working on? My postdoc research in the Synthetic Biology-Pathway Engineering Group led Yasuo Yoshikuni is in collaboration with the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) to dissect the mechanisms underlying the multi-stress tolerance of a non-model industrial yeast species: Issatchenkia orientalis. We are embracing the natural variations of this species and leveraging JGI’s high throughput capacities to perform genotyping and phenotyping of them to identify the genetic variants contributing to the stress tolerance. A comprehensive understanding of the stress tolerance mechanisms of this species will provide insights into how to further improve I. orientalis strains or other fungal species for sustainable bioproduct production.

How do you think that project would change if you were working on it in the year 2330 instead of today? The analyses and experiments would be all automated by artificial intelligence and robots in the year 2330.

When did you join JGI? February 2018

Where did you join us from? University of California, Berkeley

What drives your passion outside of JGI? Playing board games, swimming, and travel.

What song do you currently have on repeat? “So Am I” – Ava Max

What is your favorite quote? “Each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes they’re momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of, and couldn’t exist without, the many months of stumbling around in the dark that precede them” -Andrew Wiles

What is your favorite place to visit? Japan!

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