Wonyong Kim
Department of Plant Biology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1312 USA
(517) 355-4575 (Lab)
(517) 353-1926 (Fax)
kimwonyo@msu.edu
Getting to Know Wonyong Kim:
Received his Bachelor’s and Master's degree at Chonnam National University in South Korea, where he studied on functional and biochemical roles of cold-responsive RNA-binding proteins in Arabidopsis. Then, Wonyong came to US to learn about the field of Plant Pathology in Washington State University, pursuing a PhD degree. During his time there, he investigated ecological roles of secondary metabolites produced by plant pathogenic fungi, in terms of pathogenicity, fitness, and survival in nature. His research in the Trail Lab is focused on molecular evolution of fruiting body development in plant pathogenic and saprobic fungi. The primary goal is to identify genes responsible for evolution of novel forms of fruiting bodies by utilizing transcriptomics and systems biology. This project is collaborated with the Townsend lab (Department of Biostatistics, Yale University). This NSF-funded project would contribute to fundamental understanding of how shifts in gene expression drive the evolution of new morphologies in multicellular organisms during sexual stage development and help better understand biology and ecology of fungi, which is relevant to securing our staple crops. Wonyong also likes to play guitar and tennis, and watching baseball and college football games in a lazy mood.