Prof. LI Jia-yang, a plant molecular geneticist and academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has been recently designated as Vice Minister of Agriculture of China and President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). Prof. LI succeeded Prof. ZHAI Hu-qu as the new leader of China’s national level research institution in the field of agriculture.

Prof. LI was born in Feixi County, Anhui Province in July 1956. In 1982, he graduated from Anhui Agricultural College (now Anhui Agricultural University). In 1991, he obtained his Ph.D. from Brandeis University at Waltham, Massachusetts. From 1991 to 1994, he carried out post-doctoral research at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University. After returning to China, he served as assistant director and director of the CAS Institute of Genetics and Biological Development (IGBD). In January 2004, he was appointed a vice president of CAS.

The main interest of Prof. LI's scientific research is focused on the regulatory mechanism of plant growth and development by making use of model plants Arabidopsis and crop rice. His recent research work includes the following: isolation and characterization of MONOCULM 1 (MOC1), a gene that is important in the control of rice tillering, opening a new horizon to study the branching mechanism of monocotyl plants; characterization of the classic rice mutant brittle culm1 (bc1) and cloning of the BC1 gene, thus elucidating the molecular mechanism that controls the mechanical strength of rice; revealing the relation between biosynthesis of choline and temperature-sensitive male sterility through identification of an Arabidopsis mutant defective in the choline biosynthesis; isolation of MOD1 gene by using a map-based cloning approach, demonstrating that deficiency in fatty acid biosynthesis has pleiotropic effects on plant growth and development and causes premature cell death; generating antisense indole-3-glycerol phosphate synthase (IGS) RNA transgenic plants to elucidate the phytohormone indole-3'-acetic acid (IAA) biosynthetic pathway; identification of genes responsive to brassinosteroid and finding that the brassinosteroid can promote cell division; development of a plant expression system to generate transgenic Arabidopsis mutants.

Prof. LI is also the Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) as well as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS).