Dr. Ying Li and Dr. Jing Gao’s (associate professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering) project “Decoding the Intergenic Regulatory Information in Crop Genomes to Enhance Genetic Improvement of Agricultural Traits” was one of seven to be awarded the Institute for Physical Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) Postdoctoral Research Awards. The award aims to develop emerging leaders who address real-world problems in our physical environment by supporting a postdoctoral research fellow working under the supervision of two faculty advisors.
“Decoding the Intergenic Regulatory Information in Crop Genomes to Enhance Genetic Improvement of Agricultural Traits,” which will test the hypothesis that the “informative” cis-regulatory motifs buried in the intergenic non-coding region of crop genomes could be discerned by a large language model and then genome-edited to alter transcriptional control of genes to improve agriculturally important traits.