Dr. Qikun LIU

Assistant Professor, Boya Young Scholar

School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences (SAAS)

Peking University

Email: qikunliu@pku.edu.cn 

Research Area

Epigenetics and plant regeneration 

Short Bio

Dr. Qikun Liu obtained his graduate training at The Pennsylvania State University, and conducted postdoctoral research at University of California, Los Angeles. He joined SAAS at Peking University in 2019. Research in his lab focuses on epigenetic regulation of plant gene expression, with a special interest in the gene regulatory mechanism underlying cell identity changes during plant regeneration. He serves on the editorial board of Plant Physiology and Modern Agriculture.  

Selected Publications

1.  Zhang, Q., Wang, Z., Lu, X., Yan, H., Zhang, H., He, H., Bischof, S., Harris, C.J., and Liu, Q. (2023). DDT-RELATED PROTEIN4-IMITATION SWITCH alters nucleosome distribution to relieve transcriptional silencing in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell DOI: 10.1093/plcell/koad143

2.  Liu, Q.*^#, Bischof, S.*, Harris, C.J., Zhong, Z., Zhan, L., Nguyen, C., Rashoff, A., Barshop, W.D., Sun, F., Feng, S., et al. (2020). The characterization of Mediator 12 and 13 as conditional positive gene regulators in Arabidopsis. Nat Commun 11, 2798.

3.  Chen, M., Liu, Q., Gao, S.S., Young, A.E., Jacobsen, S.E., and Tang, Y. (2019). Genome mining and biosynthesis of a polyketide from a biofertilizer fungus that can facilitate reductive iron assimilation in plant. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 116, 5499-5504.

4.  Yan, Y.*, Liu, Q.*, Zang, X.*, Yuan, S., Bat-Erdene, U., Nguyen, C., Gan, J., Zhou, J., Jacobsen, S.E., and Tang, Y. (2018b). Resistance-gene-directed discovery of a natural-product herbicide with a new mode of action. Nature 559, 415-418.

5.  Zhang, Y.*, Harris, C.J.*, Liu, Q.*, Liu, W., Ausin, I., Long, Y., Xiao, L., Feng, L., Chen, X., Xie, Y., et al. (2018). Large-scale comparative epigenomics reveals hierarchical regulation of non-CG methylation in Arabidopsis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 115, E1069-E1074.

6.  Liu, Q., Wang, F., and Axtell, M.J. (2014). Analysis of complementarity requirements for plant microRNA targeting using a Nicotiana benthamiana quantitative transient assay. Plant Cell 26, 741-753.

(*co-first author, ^#co-corresponding author)

Courses Taught at Peking University

Plant Genomics; Plant Hormone