LabCompass

Zhongqing Ren

Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Indiana University

OpenAlex ORCID
Established · publishing since 2000Rising activity
Wheat and Barley Genetics and PathologyPlant Disease Resistance and GeneticsBacterial Genetics and BiotechnologyGenomics and Chromatin DynamicsLegume Nitrogen Fixing Symbiosis

Publications

54

Citations

1,101

Est. group size

~1

Recurring co-author estimate

Active years

27

Publishing since 2000

Research summary
AI-generated

Zhongqing Ren studies how bacteria organize, replicate, and manage their DNA inside living cells. The work examines proteins that shape and protect the bacterial chromosome (such as SMC proteins, H-NS, and Dps), how DNA replication machinery interacts with these processes, and the unusual genome structures found in bacteria like the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia. Many studies use advanced single-molecule and imaging techniques to observe DNA-binding proteins directly.

Bacterial chromosome organization and the nucleoidDNA replication and loop-extruding SMC proteinsDNA-binding proteins (H-NS, Dps, ParB) and their functionsSingle-molecule imaging methods for DNA-protein studiesGenome structure in bacteria such as Borrelia and Brucella

Publication activity grew substantially from around 2021 onward, with peaks in 2023 and 2025 (about five papers per year on average over the last five years).

Generated by claude-opus-4-8 from public bibliographic data · Jul 9, 2026

In context
Among 526 established Agricultural and Biological Sciences PIs within our index
Citations: 1,101cohort median 2,147
h-index: 20cohort median 23
Publications / year (recent): 5.4cohort median 2.8

Typically publishes in teams of ~6 · 13% small-team papers (≤3 authors) · across 17 venues

Publication cadence
Publications per year over the last 10 years — averaging 5.4/year recently
2017: 1 publication1718192020: 1 publication202021: 3 publications212022: 7 publications222023: 9 publications923242025: 9 publications9252026: 2 publications26
Collaborators per year
Distinct co-authors at Indiana University each year — a rough indication of whether the group around this researcher has been growing or contracting. An estimate from co-authorship, not a roster: collaborators are not necessarily lab members, and recent years can be under-counted while indexing catches up.
2017: 0 collaborators at the same institution2018: 0 collaborators at the same institution2019: 0 collaborators at the same institution2020: 0 collaborators at the same institution2021: 2 collaborators at the same institution2022: 0 collaborators at the same institution2023: 0 collaborators at the same institution2024: 0 collaborators at the same institution2025: 12 collaborators at the same institution1719212325
Recent publications
Publishes in
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)×10
  • Nature Communications×3
  • mBio×3
  • Nature Structural & Molecular Biology×1
  • Molecular Cell×1
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By research-topic overlap
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This profile was generated automatically from public scholarly data (OpenAlex). Group size and activity levels are estimates derived from co-authorship patterns.

Last updated Sep 1, 2026.

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