Ph.D.          Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, MO (2008-present)
M.Sc.         Botany, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, and Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (2009)
B.Sc.          Biology, Sun Yat-sen University, China (2005)

Evolution of Floral Development; Gene Duplication, Retention and Functional Divergence; Hybridization and Polyploidization; Speciation; Evolution of Phytohormone Sensing
General areas: plant ecological genetics, plant systematics and evolution

The shape of a flower affects plant-pollinator interactions, i.e. pollination, which is important for fruit (and/or crop) production. This is particularly obvious in bilaterally symmetrical flowers, which have evolved independently multiple times during angiosperm diversification. Within angiosperms, several most species-rich lineages (e.g. grasses, mints, peas, orchids) have predominantly bilateral symmetrical flowers, suggesting that this trait may have greatly accelerated speciation. This hypothesis is also supported by field experiments that show that plants (e.g. wild cabbage) with bilateral flowers have greater fitness than those with radial flowers in natural conditions. The genetic study of snapdragon have demonstrated that several genes (e.g. CYC-like, RAD-like and DIV-like) have been co-opted for the patterning of floral bilateral symmetry, but still little is known how the floral shift from radial to bilateral symmetry could have occurred.

This project aims to integrate developmental, phylogenetic and expression of candidate-genes approaches to understand how the developmental program shaping floral forms has evolved and thus affected floral forms. The focal organisms are mints and their relatives, a great group of plants for the study of floral evolution. The early diverging lineages (such as olive, ca. 620 species) with radial flowers are sister to the bulk of the order (ca. 23,000 species) with predominantly bilateral flowers. Parallel evolution of radial symmetry has also occurred sporadically within the bulk of the order.

In particular, this project includes:

1. The origin and maintenance of floral zygomorphy in Lamiales by recurrent duplication and conserved expression of CYC-like genes;
2. An expanded role of CYC-like in floral modification;
3. An expanded view on the origin and maintenance of floral zygomorphy: co-evolution and expression of CYC-like, RAD-like and DIV-like;
4. Parallel evolution of floral (sub)-actinomorphy through diverse changes in developmental program.

2010              Travel award from Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center (UMSL)
2012              Raven Fellowship from Dept. Biol. (UMSL)
2012              Graduate Student Research Awards from Botanical Society of America
2012- 2013     Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants NSF (DEB 1210540) to E.A.K (PI) and J.Z

Talk      Botany 2010 on Plant Evolutionary Developmental Genetics. Providence, RI.
Talk      Botany 2011 on Plant Evolutionary Developmental Genetics. St. Louis, MO.
Poster  Botany 2012 on Plant Evolutionary Developmental Genetics. Columbus, OH.