The   Ye   Lab  

Parasitoid wasps comprise extremely diverse species. Accumulating genomic data and their unique characteristics have made parasitoid wasps become central models for understanding fundamental questions in evolutionary biology. Meanwhile, Parasitoid wasps also are important natural enemies of arthropods and are widely used as bio-control agents against insect pests in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, health.

To trace the history of the laboratory, Professor Joo-Tso Chu (1900-1981) is the founder. He is recognized as a pioneer in the classification and biological control of parasitoid wasps in China. Since 1932, he had collected and classified a lot of parasitoid wasps from important insect pests in agricultural and forestry ecosystems. At the same time, he also attached great importance to the study of parasitoid biology and applications.

In 1960, Professor Cui Hu graduated as a postgraduate student with the thesis entitled “Investigation on the biology and utilization of Dibrachys cavus (Walker)”, who is the first postgraduate student supervised by Prof. Chu. Since then, Prof. Hu has been engaged in research on species resources and utilization of parasitoids associated with rice, vegetable, mulberry tree and tea tree habitats as well as forestry ecosystem. Meanwhile, he also expanded his research on insect baculovirus biology and its application for controlling cabbage and tea insect pests. Since the late 1990s, He led the laboratory to study immune interactions and chemical communication between parasitoids and their hosts.

As one of the Ph. D. students supervised by Prof. Hu, Professor Gongyin Ye graduated in 1996 with Doctor degree and continue to work in the lab for studying immune interactions between parasitoids and their hosts with the model of pteromalid wasps, particularly focusing to the role of parasitoid venom in regulating host immunity and development as well as their molecular mechanism. Meanwhile, he is also interested in assessing ecological safety of genetically modified rice with insect resistance, and pest biological control with parasitoid wasps in agricultural system. Now, he is leading a team focused on researches for parasitoid wasps on ecological fitness and evolution, venomic and venom physiological functions as well as the development of genetic engineering insecticides with various technologies including omics and bioinformatics technologies, modern biotechnology, and deep learning for artificial intelligence. The lab's goal is not only to unravel the mysteries of parasitic wasp parasitism and its evolution, but also to develop new approaches and methods for green and sustainable management of major agricultural pests.