ANNUAL REPORT Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy ...

Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of SciencesAnnual Report2. Attraction of National "Thousand Foreign Expert Talents Program" toOverseas Leading Talents to KIBKIB has recruited 1 overseas leading talent through the national "Thousand ForeignExpert Talents Program", which highly promoted the scientific and technologicalinnovation capacity and the international influence of KIB in the science and technologyarea.Prof. Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen, academician of National Academy of Sciences of theUSA, born in May, 1952, is a staff of the Genetics Department of University of Georgia.With the help of KIB, Prof. Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen was selected into the seventh"Thousand Foreign Expert Talents Program) (foreign expert program) by OrganizationDepartment of CPC Central Committee in 2012. Prof. Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen is oneof the top scientists in the world in the areas of comparative and functional genomicsof plants and bioinformatics, who has been engaged in the research of comparative andfunctional genomics of plants for a long time. The laboratory led by him has been theleader in the area researching the genomic structure and evolution of plants in the worldfor the past 25 years and he has published over 150 influential papers at the internationalleading academic journals including Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, PNAS andPlant Cell. It was his laboratory that has cloned the plant's transposon and proved itsreverse epigenetic regulation for the first time, and the first to find the structure of thehigher plant genome, the first to reveal the specificity of insertion of several kindsof transposons and also the first to carry out the comparative molecular mapping ofplant genomes. Besides, his laboratory has been the first to find the determinant andmechanism for the instability of the plant genome and reveal how the plant genomeexpand and shrink, which resolved the pending C-value enigma. He has also found thehigh instabilities of some anti-disease genes and has found the first case of directionalloci recombination in plants for the first time.By closely depending on the huge advantages of germplasm resources of camelliaplants in Yunnan, the research group of Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen has performedcomparative and functional genomics studies on the represents of camellia plants,including Large-leaf tea, Camellia oleifera, and Yunnan camellia. At the same time,by taking the advantages of rich resources of gramineous plants in Yunnan, the grouphas carried out researches on the comparative and functional genomics and genomicdiversities of the specimens with important scientific meanings and great food crop andbiomass energy utilization values.3. Major Breakthrough of National "Youth Thousand Talents Program"In the year 2012, Dr. HU Kai-Feng and Dr. WU Jian-Qiang, the 2 "OverseasOutstanding Talents" introduced by KIB were successfully selected into the"Youth Thousand Talents Program" by Organization Department of CPC CentralCommittee.—— CONSTRUCTION OF TALENTS TEAM AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PLANTPORMS ——