Jing-ke Weng
Assistant Professor
BIOLOGY
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
United States of America
Biography
Weng joined the Whitehead Institute faculty in the fall of 2013, having conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Joseph Noel at the Salk Institute. He earned his PhD in biochemistry from Purdue University and earned a BS in biotechnology from Zhejiang University
Research Interest
Using model plants that represent several major lineages of land plants, Jing-Ke Weng and his lab are studying how complex metabolic traits evolve in a Darwinian fashion. According to Darwinism, traits evolve incrementally as the most beneficial mutations are selected. Weng is interested in how such step-wise processes produced in plants elaborate metabolic pathways and tightly paired hormones and receptors.
Publications
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Weng, J. K., & Chapple, C. (2010). The origin and evolution of lignin biosynthesis. New Phytologist, 187(2), 273-285.
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Li, X., Weng, J. K., & Chapple, C. (2008). Improvement of biomass through lignin modification. The Plant Journal, 54(4), 569-581.
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Banks, J. A., Nishiyama, T., Hasebe, M., Bowman, J. L., Gribskov, M., Albert, V. A., ... & Axtell, M. J. (2011). The Selaginella genome identifies genetic changes associated with the evolution of vascular plants. science, 332(6032), 960-963.
