biology

Xuemei Chen

Xuemei Chen is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Xuemei Chen rather than just read about it. In short: Xuemei Chen (Chinese: 陈雪梅; born 1966) is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is the Furuta Chair Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside.

Key takeaways

Xuemei Chen belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Xuemei Chen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Xuemei Chen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Xuemei Chen (Chinese: 陈雪梅; born 1966) is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is the Furuta Chair Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013.

Early life and education Chen tied the top high school exam score in her province and was allowed to study plant physiology at Peking University, where she graduated in 1988. The China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application program awarded her a scholarship to graduate school at Cornell University. While at Cornell's Boyce Thompson Institute she studied the gene expression of chloroplasts and earned her Ph.D. in 1995. Her postdoctoral work was carried out (studying the genetics of floral patterning) at the California Institute of Technology.

Career In 1999 Chen started work as an assistant professor at Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology. In 2002 she was part of a team that discovered that MicroRNA existed in plants. This work led her to win the 2005 Board of Trustees' Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence concurrent with a promotion to associate professor; in 2005 she moved to University of California, Riverside (UCR) and was promoted to full professor in 2009. In 2011 she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "pioneering discoveries in the field of plant biology in small RNA metabolism and plant development." That year she was also named a Plant Biology Investigator (an award of US$1,666,665) by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. In 2013 Chen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences: the third member from UCR's Center for Plant Cell Biology and sixth from the university's College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Publications Chen, Xuemei (August 2012). "Small RNAs in development – insights from plants". Current Opinion in Genetics & Development. 22 (4): 361–367. doi:10.1016/j.gde.2012.04.004. PMC 3419802. PMID 22578318.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Xuemei Chen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Xuemei Chen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Xuemei Chen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Xuemei Chen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Xuemei Chen

In research: Xuemei Chen appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Xuemei Chen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Xuemei Chen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1966 births, 21st-century American women biologists, American molecular biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Xuemei Chen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Xuemei Chen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Xuemei Chen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Xuemei Chen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Xuemei Chen in simple terms?

Why does Xuemei Chen matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Xuemei Chen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Xuemei Chen.