Liang Ronghong, doctoral supervisor, professor at the College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, and researcher at Hubei Hongshan Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from the College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University in 2020, during which he studied plant reproductive development. In the same year, he joined the laboratory of Gao Caixia at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as a postdoctoral fellow, conducting research on gene editing. From 2023 to 2025, he served as an assistant researcher in the same group, working on the development of apomictic breeding technologies by combining plant reproductive research with gene editing. In 2026, he was jointly appointed by Hubei Hongshan Laboratory and the College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, where he is dedicated to research and develop in synthetic genomics and biomanufacturing through AI-driven intelligent design and precision genome editing technologies.

He has published 9 SCI papers in journals including Science and Nature Biotechnology, of which 4 were as first author in journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Nature Communications, and Molecular Plant, and 4 as co-author in journals including Science, Cell, and Plant Biotechnology Journal. He has applied for 6 domestic and international invention patents, including 2 Chinese patents, 2 PCT patents, and 1 patent each in the United States and Argentina. He has led major national science and technology projects on agricultural biological breeding and key special sub-projects under the National Key Research and Development Program, chaired General Program and Youth Science Fund Category C projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and participated as a core member in the Gates Foundation project "Delivering synthetic apomictic rice to small holder farmers in Africa."

Our research group is currently recruiting students who are interested in gene editing, AI, and synthetic biology, and who have scientific aspirations. Undergraduate students, master's and doctoral candidates, and postdoctoral fellows are warmly welcome to contact me and apply. We hope our platform can provide everyone with the opportunity to pursue their scientific dreams and contribute to the advancement of research in our country.

Publications:

(1) Ronghong Liang^#, Zixin He^#, Kevin Tianmeng Zhao^#, Haocheng Zhu, Jiacheng Hu, Guanwen Liu, Qiang Gao, Meiyan Liu, Rui Zhang, Jin-Long Qiu, Caixia Gao*. Prime editing using CRISPR-Cas12a and circular RNAs in human cells. Nature Biotechnology, 42,12 (2024): 1867-1875. (5-Year IF: 59.5, 55 Citations).

(2) Ronghong Liang^#, Shan Wang^#, Yibo Cai, Zhenyu Li, Jiaming Li, Jingjing Wei, Chao Sun, Kunling Chen, Caixia Gao*. Circular RNA-mediated inverse prime editing in human cells. Nature Communications, 16,1 (2025): 5057. (5-Year IF: 17.2, 7 Citations)

(3) Ronghong Liang, Caixia Gao*. Creating one-line hybrid crops by synthetic apomixis. Molecular Plant, 17,1 (2024): 16-18. (5-Year IF: 25.8, 2 Citations). 

(4) Ronghong Liang^#, Li You^#, Fang Dong, Xiaolu Zhao, Jie Zhao*. Identification of hydroxyproline-containing proteins and hydroxylation of proline residues in rice. Frontiers in Plant Science, 11 (2020): 1027. (5-Year IF: 5.7, 8 Citations)

(5) Chao Sun#, Hongchao Li^#, Yijing Liu^#, Yunjia Li, Rui Gao, Xiaoli Shi, Hongyuan Fei, Jinxing Liu, Ronghong Liang, Caixia Gao*. Iterative recombinase technologies for efficient and precise genome engineering across kilobase to megabase scales. Cell, 188,17 (2025): 4693-4710.e15. (5-Year IF: 48.9, 1 Citations).

(6) Li You^#, Li Yu^#, Ronghong Liang^#, Ruhao Sun, Fan Hu, Xiaoyun Lu, Jie Zhao*. Identification and analysis of genes involved in double fertilization in rice. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2021. (5-Year IF: 5.7, 7 Citations).

(7) Shuai Jin^#, Zixu Zhu^#, Yunjia Li^#, Shouyue Zhang^#, Yijing Liu, Danyuan Li, Yuanqing Li, Yingfeng Luo, Zhiheng Cheng, Kevin Tianmeng Zhao, Qiang Gao, Guanglei Yang, Hongchao Li, Ronghong Liang, Rui Zhang, Jin-Long Qiu, Yong E. Zhang*, Jun-Jie Gogo Liu*, Caixia Gao*. Functional RNA splitting drove the evolutionary emergence of type V CRISPR-Cas systems from transposons. Cell, 2025. (5-Year IF: 48.9, 0 Citations).

(8) Haocheng Zhu^#, Xu Qin^#, Leyan Wei^#, Dandan Jiang, Qiao Zhang, Wenqian Wang, Ronghong Liang, Rui Zhang, Kang Zhang, Guanwen Liu, Kevin Tianmeng Zhao, Kunling Chen, Jin-Long Qiu*, Caixia Gao*. Engineered geminivirus replicons enable rapid in planta directed evolution. Science, 2025. (5-Year IF: 49.7, 0 Citations).

(9) Fengti Qiu, Chenxiao Xue, Jinxing Liu, Boshu Li, Qiang Gao, Ronghong Liang, Kunling Chen, Caixia Gao*. An efficient mRNA delivery system for genome editing in plants. Plant Biotechnology Journal, 2025. (5-Year IF: 12.4, 1 Citations).

Patent application：

(1) Caixia Gao, Ronghong Liang, CIRCULAR RNA-BASED PRIME EDITOR. China, CN2024106086298.

(2) Caixia Gao, Ronghong Liang, CIRCULAR RNA-BASED PRIME EDITOR. PCT, PCT/CN2024/093674.

(3) Caixia Gao, Ronghong Liang, INVERSE PRIME EDITING SYSTEM. China, CN2024112204624.

(4) Caixia Gao, Ronghong Liang, INVERSE PRIME EDITING SYSTEM. PCT, PCT/CN2025/115543.

(5) Caixia Gao, Ronghong Liang, CIRCULAR RNA-BASED PRIME EDITOR. USA, 19/485,176

(6) Caixia Gao, Ronghong Liang, CIRCULAR RNA-BASED PRIME EDITOR. Argentina, AR20240101265.