Each year, several biology and ecology postgraduate students are co-supervised by Te Papa natural history researchers. One of these students, Weixuan Ning, has completed his PhD at Massey University in Plant Biology. His co-supervisors – Botany Curator Heidi Meudt and Associate Professor Jen Tate – talk about his time as a Massey and Te Papa student, and the mahi he has been involved in.
Weixuan is originally from China but had already studied internationally before coming to New Zealand. In 2018, he completed a Master of Science in Ecology and Population Genetics at the University of Oulu in Finland, studying the transcriptomics of the model plant Arabidopsis lyrata. For part of his research project, he was awarded an Erasmus scholarship to work in Angela Hancock’s lab at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Germany.
The two of us – Massey University Associate Professor Jennifer Tate and Te Papa Botany Curator Heidi Meudt – interviewed Weixuan via Skype in 2018 for a project funded by a Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund grant to study the role of polyploidy – or whole genome duplication – in the New Zealand flora.
We were impressed by Weixuan’s enthusiasm, academic record and research skill set, and we thought he would make a great addition to the project. Later that year, Weixuan moved to Palmerston North to join Jen’s lab at Massey University, where he quickly got to work extracting and sequencing DNA in the lab and also doing some field work to collect specimens with Heidi and others.
Weixuan used high-throughput next generation DNA sequencing on dozens of samples of his focal group Azorella that we collected from throughout New Zealand, many of which are now specimens at Te Papa.
Azorella is interesting because it contains many polyploid species, some with as many as 10 extra sets of chromosomes, rather than the normal two sets! Species of Azorella also occur in South America, so as part of his project, Weixuan collaborated with researchers from the USA who are studying those species.
Weixuan then analysed the DNA data using bioinformatics (and big computers – thanks NeSI!) to understand the biogeography and species relationships of New Zealand species of Azorella, their patterns of diversification of genome size, selected morphological characteristics, and their ecological niches.
To successfully complete his PhD in 2023, Weixuan used a combination of his intellectual curiosity, hard work, and determination, with his ever-increasing skills in the lab, programming, and bioinformatics.
Since completing his degree, Weixuan moved to Hong Kong for a short postdoctoral fellowship, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Iowa State University, USA in Jonathan Wendel’s lab working on cotton, which is a model plant used to study polyploidy.
When he’s not busy working on his new research projects, he’s also preparing the individual chapters of his PhD thesis for submission and publication in scientific journals. You can read the first of these, “A roadmap of phylogenomic methods for studying polyploid plant genera”, which is now published, with more to come soon.
Weixuan is yet another of our students who has flown the nest. We miss him and we also look forward to seeing where his career takes him next.
Congratulations, Dr. Ning!
Acknowledgements
Weixuan’s PhD research was funded by Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund for the project, “Whole-genome duplication in plants: what is the pathway to success?” which was granted to PI Bill Lee (Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research) in 2017. Heidi and Jen were AI’s on this grant and co-supervised Weixuan’s PhD.
Weixuan’s research was supported by Te Papa, Massey University, Massey Genome Service and New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI), with additional funding from the Australasian Systematic Botany Society Hansjörg Eichler Scientific Research Fund and the Royal Society of New Zealand Hutton Fund.
The Marsden grant also supported other students including Luke Liddell, who completed his PhD, “Polyploidy in the New Zealand Flora“, at the University of Auckland in 2024, and Sophie Newmarch (in photo above) who is finishing her PhD on the “Origin and diversification of Libertia (Iridaceae).”
Thanks to Chris, Jen, John, Justin, Minkyung, Prashant, Sam, Sofie, Sophie and Weixuan for allowing use of these photos!
Further reading
- , , , , , , , et al. 2021. New targets acquired: Improving locus recovery from the Angiosperms353 probe set. Applications in Plant Sciences 9(7): e11420.
- Weixuan Ning. 2020. Hansjörg Eichler grant report: Phylogenomic analysis of New Zealand polyploid Azorella (Apiaceae). Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 185:38-41.
- Weixuan Ning. 2023. Phylogenomics and evolution of polyploid Azorella (Apiaceae) in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Plant Biology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand.
- Weixuan Ning, Heidi M. Meudt, Jennifer A. Tate. 2024. A roadmap of phylogenomic methods for studying polyploid plant genera. Applications in Plant Sciences. 12: e11580.
