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Plant Genome Engineering and Plant Synthetic Biology

Plants are essential to the environment and human life. We rely so much on plants for food to eat, oxygen to breathe, clothes to wear, fuel to drive, materials to build, and medicine to cure. The growing world population demands for increased crop production. We believe plant biotechnology will play a critical role for supporting the world growth in a sustainable way.

The Qi lab works on plant genome engineering and synthetic biology. We are interested in developing and improving tools for editing plant genome, fine-tuning plant transcriptome, detecting plant pathogens and sensing environmental stresses. By collaborating with other scientists, our long-term goal is to conduct translational research for breeding and engineering better crops to reduce carbon emissions, and ensure global food & nutrition security.

News:
8/29/2025: Our lab coauthored two exciting papers. The Nature Communications paper reported an improved gene gun for plant transformation and genome editing. Check out this news report and AGNR news. The Nature paper demonstrated important roles of cryptic variation in plants.
5/2/2025: Our lab developed an all-in-one CRISPR toolbox for large-scale screens in plants, published in Plant Cell, featured by Plant Cell, and reported in AGNR news. Congrats to Cheng, et. al. for the job well done!
3/7/2025: We published a review on plant genome engineering in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology as a featured cover paper. Check out the review here.
2/14/2025: Our lab published a PBJ paper reporting new cytosine base editors using cytidine deaminases sourced from kill whale. Check it out here.
11/20/2024: For the 5th year in a row, Dr. Qi is a Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher.
9/8/2024: Our paper entitled "Genome-edited trees for high-performance engineered wood" was published in Matter, featured in Maryland Today, and other media outlets in the USA such as GEN and Earth.com , as well as in the UK, Mexico and Colombia. Dr. Qi was interviewed on this by NPR Science Friday on Sept 6.
8/8/2024: Dr. Qi co-organized the 2024 IUFRO Tree Biotech conference, which was concluded successfully.
6/14/2024: Our paper on novel base editors was just published in Nature Communications.
9/30/2023: CRISPR-Cas9 from probiotic confers efficient genome engineering in plants. Check out our paper at Nature Communications.
4/30/2023: In collaboration with IDT, we have engineered probably the most efficient Cas12a nuclease for genome editing in eukaryotes. See the paper in Genome Biology
4/10/2023: An efficient Cas12a promoter editing system has been developed. Check out our Nature Plants paper.
5/20/2022: Our lab published a CRISPR-Combo plant genome editing system in Nature Plants, which is commented in News&Views, reported in UMD AGNR news. Congrats to all authors!