Zengjian Jeffrey Chen

Zengjian Jeffrey Chen is the D. J. Sibley Centennial Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics at The University of Texas at Austin. Chen received his B.S. at Zhejiang Agricultural University (now Zhejiang University), M.S. at Nanjing Agricultural University, and Ph.D. in Genetics at Texas A&M University. Following a postdoctoral position at University of Minnesota and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, he joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 1999, where he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. In 2005, he moved to The University of Texas at Austin, holding the D. J. Sibley Centennial Professorship in Plant Molecular Genetics, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2008 in the Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology (now Department of Molecular Biosciences) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology. From 2011 to February 2021, Chen served as a consultant and Adjunct Professor at Nanjing Agricultural University. Chen is an elected fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2011) and American Society of Plant Biologists (2023) and has received NIH National Research Service Award (1997-1999), Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award (2011), and Cotton Biotechnology Award (2016). Chen is known for his pioneering work on defining genomic and epigenetic regulation in plant hybrids and polyploids with an emphasis on linking gene expression variation with phenotypic traits using Arabidopsis, cotton, and corn as experimental systems. A distinctive contribution of his work has been to integrate polyploidy and hybrid vigor with epigenetics and gene expression into a unified framework for elucidating plant genome evolution and crop performance.

Chen has developed an innovative research program to study molecular mechanisms for gene expression changes and evolutionary consequences in plant hybrids (formed between strains of the same or different species) and allopolyploids (formed between two or more related species) relative to the parents. His research employs Arabidopsis (a weedy plant in the mustard family), cron (a hybrid crop), and cotton as experimental systems and uses genomic, proteomic, and systems biology approaches, as well as genetic and cell and molecular biology methodologies. Chen is a leading authority on gene expression regulation in plant hybrids and polyploids and on cotton genomics. His research established that epigenetic mechanisms regulate nucleolar dominance and genome-wide non-additive gene expression in plant hybrids and polyploids, contributing to both hybrid vigor (heterosis) and inbreeding depression. These regulatory and transcriptional changes influence circadian rhythms associated with heterosis, energy and metabolic networks underlying inbreeding depression, and phenotypic variation, including enhanced stress responses, increased seed size, and improved fiber cell development, during polyploid evolution and plant domestication. Chen also led an international effort to sequence and analyze the genomes and epigenomes of all five cotton species, as well as the pan-genomes of 113 wild and cultivated accessions of Upland and Pima cotton. These landmark resources have substantially advanced cotton improvement and provided a foundation for studying polyploid genome evolution and function. Importantly, research findings on plant hybrid genetics, epigenetics, and polyploidy have broader relevance to sexually reproducing organisms, including humans. Hybrid vigor and inbreeding depression, for example, are widespread across animals. Likewise, because many cancer cells exhibit polyploidy and aneuploidy, understanding how polyploid plants regulate and balance gene dosage may provide new insights and strategies for cancer research, with potential implications for human health.