The Tyrosine Aminomutase TAM1 Is Required for β-Tyrosine Biosynthesis in Rice

Author Profile

Jian Yan

Current Position: Postdoctoral Scientist at Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, USA and South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

Education: PhD (2007) at Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, B.S (2002) at Yunnan University, China.

Non-scientific Interests: Spending time with my son, playing table tennis, and playing cards.

After graduating from Yunnan University with an undergraduate degree in chemistry, I started a PhD program in phytochemistry in Minghua Qiu's lab at the Kunming institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I completed my PhD in 2007 and began working at the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, first as an assistant professor and later as an associate professor. When I joined Georg Jander's lab at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research as a visiting scholar in 2011, I received my first exposure to studying plant molecular biology and plant-insect interactions, which fascinated me. In my continuing research in the Jander lab, I am working to identify defensive non-protein amino acids and their biosynthetic pathways in plants. Together with collaborators at Kyoto University in Japan, we identified the non-protein amino acid beta-tyrosine in rice. This molecule was previously known primarily as a constituent of bacterial polyketide antibiotics. Hence, the discovery of beta-tyrosine in an important crop plant is very interesting and has potential practical applications in protecting rice against biotic stress. After returning to the South China Botanical Garden this summer, I will continue to investigate novel defensive metabolites, their biosynthetic pathways, and their functions in crop and medical plants.