Name Wenying Zhuang | ||
Wenying Zhuang (July 27, 1948) is a Chinese mycologist known for her contributions to the study on species diversity and phylogeny of Ascomycetes (1).
Contents
Biography
Wenying Zhuang was born and raised in Beijing, China. She is the daughter of Qiaosheng Zhuang, a wheat breeder and academician of the Chinese Academy of Science (2).
Wenying studied Plant Pathology in Department of Agronomy at the Shanxi Agricultural College (now Shanxi Agricultural University) from 1973 to 1975, and then entered Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), where she received a Master of Science degree in Mycology in 1985 She continued graduate study in Mycology at Cornell University, earning a Ph.D in 1987, under Richard P. Korf. (3).
In 1975, Wenying started to work as a lecturer at the Shanxi Agriculture University for three years. Then, she was appointed as an assistant professor at the Institute of Microbiology Mycology Division of the CAS. After she received her Ph.D, she went back to China and continued her academic career on mycology in the same laboratory in the Institute of Microbiology. She worked as postdoctoral research fellow in Cornell University from July 1990 to January 1991. She spent the rest of her career (1991 to present) working at the Systematic Mycology and Lichenology Laboratory, of the Institute of Microbiology, CAS (now upgraded as National Key Laboratory of Mycology (4).
She currently serves as the director of Systematic Mycology and Lichenology Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology, CAS for two terms. In 2009, she was elected as a CAS Academiciana. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Editorial Committee of Cryptogamic Flora of China, and am Editorial Board Member of the international mycological journals Fungal Diversity, Mycotaxon, and Phytotaxa. She is Honorary Member of Mycological Society of America, and Executive Committee Member of the International Mycological Association (3, 4).
On October 19, 2010, Wenying was elected as Third World Academy Society (TWAS) Academician in the 21st annual conference in Hyderabad City, India. In this conference, 400 peoples from 40 countries attended (4).
As a professor in CAS, she has supervised seven doctoral students and two master students. (4).
Scientific work
She worked on wild resources surveys, collections, and study of species diversity of certain groups of Ascomycetes through tropical area and Northwest areas of China, including Henan, Hubei, Yunnan, Zhejiang, Hainan, Fujian and Taiwan. In addition, she keeps working on completion of phylogeny study on her own collections, and also specimens preserved in CAS Institute of Microbiology. She provided a more complete and accurate knowledge of these species diversity based on modern taxonomic information and molecular biology techniques (1, 4).
Another main contribution of her study is molecular phylogenetic of Ascomycetes, between species or genera with similar anatomical structures in Otidea, Pyronemataceae, Penicillium, Nectriaceae and Helotiales, utilizing molecular bio-information methods such as ITS, 28S rDNA partial sequencing, and other Nucleotide sequence analysis (4, 5, 6).
As a result of her work, she has established 9 new genera, 152 new species, and 18 new sub-species and 257 species reports found in China (4).
Honors and awards
There is one genus named in honor of her contribution: Wenyingia, in the family Pyronemataceae. It is a monotypic genus, which contains a single species Wenyingia sichuanensis found in western Sichuan Province, China (7).
In 1995, Wenying was awarded Third prize of Natural Science from Chinese Academy of Sciences (3)
Publications
Wenying has published 180 papers, of which 97 publications in SCI indexed journals. She has written and published 5 books and chapters in other 8 books so far (4)
Selected books
Higher Fungi of Tropical China. PP1–485. Ainsworth & Bisby's Dictionary of the Fungi (ed. 9) (2001) Helotiales, Leotiales, Pezizales.
Selected articles
1. Zhuang W.y. (2005a) Re-dispositions of specimens filed under Lachnea on deposit in HMAS. Fungal Diversity 18: 211-224.
2. Zhuang, W.y. (ed.) (2005) Fungi of Northwestern China. Mycotaxon Ltd. Ithaca. pp. 1–430.
3. Liu, C.y. & W.y. Zhuang (2006) Relationships among some members of the genus Otidea (Pezizales, Pyronemataceae). Fung. Divers. 23: 181-192.
4. Wang, L. & W.y. Zhuang (2007) Phylogenetic analyses of penicillia based on partial calmodulin gene sequences. BioSystems 88: 113-126.
5. Zhuang W.y., Y. Nong & J. Luo (2007) New species and new records of Bionectriaceae and Nectriaceae from Hubei, China. Fung. Divers. 24: 347-357.
6. Li, W.y. & W.y. Zhuang (2007) Re-examinations of Botryosphaeriaceae (Dothideomycetes) on deposit in HMAS. Mycotaxon 100: 209-220.
7. Zhuang, W.y. & X.s. He (2007) A new pycnidioid basidiomycete family with gelatinized fruitbodies. Mycosystema 26: 339-342.