Guangchao Sun

Guangchao joined the lab in 2017 after completing his PhD in Plant Pathology where he studied a fungal pathogen called Magnaporthe oryzae which causes blast disease in both rice and wheat. In his PhD he focused on the role of Target Of Rapamycin (TOR) and autophagy during the infection of rice by M. oryzae. Over the past several years he has worked on a range of projects spanning genome annotation, abiotic stress tolerance in crop wild relatives, and GWAS for expression traits. He currently acts as the interface between the lab and the NSF funded CRRI project.

Google Scholar Profile

Recent Publications

Engelhorn J, Snodgrass S, Kok A, Seetharam A, Schneider M, Kiwit T, Singh A, Banf M, Khaipho-Burch M, Runcie D, Camargo V, Torres-Rodriguez JV, Sun G, Stam M, Fiorani F, Schnable JC, Bass H, Hufford M, Stich B, Frommer W, Ross-Ibarra J, Hartwig T (2023) Phenotypic variation in maize can be largely explained by genetic variation at transcription factor binding sites. doi: 10.1101/2023.08.08.551183 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.08.08.551183 Preprint
Shrestha N, Mangal H, Torres-Rodriguez JV, Tross MC, Lopez-Corona L, Linders K, Sun G, Mural RV, Schnable JC (2025) Off-the-shelf image analysis models outperform human visual assessment in identifying genes controlling seed color variation in sorghum. The Plant Phenome Journal doi: 10.1002/ppj2.70013 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2024.07.22.604683
Tross MC, Grzybowski M, Jubery TZ, Grove RJ, Nishimwe AV, Torres-Rodriguez JV, Sun G, Ganapathysubramanian B, Ge Y, Schnable JC (2024) Data driven discovery and quantification of hyperspectral leaf reflectance phenotypes across a maize diversity panel. The Plant Phenome Journal doi: 10.1002/ppj2.20106 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.12.15.571950
Torres-Rodriguez JV, Li D, Turkus J, Newton L, Davis J, Lopez-Corona L, Ali W, Sun G, Mural RV, Grzybowski M, Zamft B, Thompson AM, Schnable JC (2024) Population level gene expression can repeatedly link genes to functions in maize. The Plant Journal doi: 10.1101/2023.10.31.565032 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2023.10.31.565032
Sun G, Yu H, Wang P, Lopez-Guerrero MG, Mural RV, Mizero ON, Grzybowski M, Song B, van Dijk K, Schachtman DP, Zhang C, Schnable JC (2023) A role for heritable transcriptomic variation in maize adaptation to temperate environments. Genome Biology doi: 10.1186/s13059-023-02891-3 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2022.01.28.478212
Yu H, Li M, Sandhu J, Sun G, Schnable JC, Walia H, Xie W, Yu B, Mower JP, Zhang C (2022) Pervasive misannotation of microexons that are evolutionarily conserved and crucial for gene function in plants. Nature Communications doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28449-8
Khound R, Sun G, Mural RV, Schnable JC, Santra D (2022) SNP Discovery in Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) using low-pass genome sequencing. Panicum miliaceum doi: 10.1002/pld3.447
Sun G, Wase N, Su S, Jenkins J, Zhou B, Torres-Rodriguez JT, ..., Foltz A, ..., Sigmon B, Yu B, Obata T, Schmutz J, Schnable JC (2022) Genome of Paspalum vaginatum and the role of trehalose mediated autophagy in increasing maize biomass. Paspalum vaginatum doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35507-8 (Foltz A is 17 of 26 authors) bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2021.08.18.456832
Mural RV, Sun G, Grzybowski M, Tross MC, Jin H, Smith C, Newton L, Andorf CM, Woodhouse MR, Thompson AM, Sigmon B, Schnable JC (2022) Association mapping across a multitude of traits collected in diverse environments identifies pleiotropic loci in maize. Gigascience doi: 10.1093/gigascience/giac080 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2022.02.25.480753
Sun G, Mural RV, Turkus JD, Schnable JC (2021) Quantitative resistance loci to southern rust mapped in a temperate maize diversity panel. Phytopathology doi: 10.1101/2021.04.02.438220 bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2021.04.02.438220