Prof Yiliang Ding, John Innes Centre
YouTube Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HukM4SfFGWc
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Abstract:
RNA is far more than a passive messenger between DNA and protein. Its ability to fold into diverse and dynamic structures creates an additional layer of information that regulates gene expression and enables plants to respond to their environment. Understanding this “RNA language” requires approaches that capture structural diversity and uncover functional signals hidden within vast datasets.
In this talk, I will describe our journey from probing RNA structures in living plants to using artificial intelligence to decode their regulatory information. Single-molecule RNA structure profiling reveals alternative RNA conformations and their dynamic responses to environmental cues, exemplified by the cold-responsive long non-coding RNA COOLAIR. I will then introduce PlantRNA-FM, a foundation model pretrained on 1,124 diverse plant transcriptomes that learns general representations of plant RNA and uncovers sequence and structural features associated with biological functions, including translation efficiency.
Moving beyond prediction toward discovery and design, we use AI to identify translation-associated RNA structural motifs, predict their positional effects, and quantitatively tune gene expression. Finally, I will introduce PlantScience.ai, a virtual plant biology scientist. Together, these advances demonstrate how integrating RNA biology, large-scale data and foundation models can move us from reading RNA language toward understanding and ultimately writing its regulatory code.
Bio:
Yiliang is Group Leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. She received her BSc in Plant Sciences from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and her PhD in Biology from the University of East Anglia and the John Innes Centre. She undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Dundee and at Penn State University. Her research is on the interface of RNA biology, computation and plant science, developing and applying machine learning approaches to decode RNA structure and function in plants.