Ying Wang
University of Florida, FL·Plant Science & Agriculture
Among the smallest known infectious agents are viroids: short, circular RNA molecules that carry no protein-coding genes yet can sicken and kill crop plants. Viroids killed roughly 40 million oil and coconut palms between 1980 and 2007, and there is no effective measure against viroid or viral diseases in crops.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Biochemistry
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
viroids
RNA structure
noncoding RNA
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Determine the in vivo structures of viroid RNAs in different subcellular locations of living plant cells, using chemical probing that marks how RNA is folded together with computational algorithms.
- Build an atlas of viroid structurome dynamics by probing RNA structures at multiple time points across the course of infection in plant cells.
- Identify in vivo RNA structural features that regulate the intracellular movement of viroids, linking specific folds to steps in infection.
- Map how viroid RNA structures are altered by high temperatures, which worsen foliage symptoms and reduce potato yield during viroid infection.
More about the research
Climate change is projected to raise the risk of new outbreaks. Infectious RNAs work largely through the three-dimensional shapes they fold into, so mapping those shapes could reveal targets for blocking infection.
Why it matters
Viroids cause severe crop losses, including in palms and potatoes, and growers have no effective treatment. Mapping the RNA structures viroids need for successful infection could provide targets for screening structure-directed anti-viroid drugs. That knowledge could help protect crops as warming temperatures raise the risk of new viroid outbreaks.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Zhengqing Ouyang
University of Massachusetts, MA·Biochemistry
Develop statistical and computational methods to infer in vivo RNA 3D structures from proximity-ligation sequencing data, which records which RNA segments are physically close in living cells.
Jean-Denis Beaudoin
University of Connecticut, CT·Genetics
Generate detailed maps of the epitranscriptome, the chemical modifications on RNA, across the native zebrafish transcriptome during the maternal-to-zygotic transition, and test how specific modifications affect gene expression.
Susan Schroeder
University of Oklahoma, OK·Plant Science & Agriculture
Map dihydrouridine (DHU) on mRNAs at single-nucleotide resolution across tissues and stress conditions in Arabidopsis, using Oxford Nanopore direct RNA sequencing with machine-learning detection algorithms.
The school
University of Florida: 65 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 795 research doctorates a year.
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