Fran tenBensel Benne | Agronomy and Horticulture
Gen Xu began Aug. 1 as a research assistant professor in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. He is currently studying the mechanism of heterosis in maize using transcriptomic data.
Xu was born and raised in China. He majored in agriculture during his undergraduate studies and earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy and a doctorate in crop genetics and breeding from the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
Xu met Jinliang Yang, University of Nebraska–Lincoln associate professor of agronomy and horticulture, at the China Agricultural University in 2017 while Yang gave an academic talk. Yang was recruiting postdocs, so Xu applied, got the job and moved to Nebraska. He’s been working with Yang ever since.
“I love my research field,” Xu said. “Interesting and amazing scientific results get me excited.”
Xu has worked in maize genetics and genomics for over ten years. His research integrates different omics data, such as phenomics, genomics, transcriptomics, and methylomics datasets, to dissect the genetic mechanisms of quantitative traits.
He says he loves the city of Lincoln because it’s medium-sized, the cost of living is relatively low, and the shopping and transportation are very convenient.
“A funny thing happened back in 2019,” Xu said. “We were harvesting corn in the field, and the Lincoln police stopped us while transporting the corn to the pickup. The police said someone reported that we might be stealing corn.”
The corn materials used in general scientific research are small.
“I told the police, look, is such a small amount of corn worth stealing?” Xu said. “Finally, the police checked our university IDs and let us go!”
Despite this event, Xu said he has a lot of wonderful memories living in Lincoln, even if some are a bit more colorful than others.
