Huiying Li

4338 CNSI

Positions & Affiliations:

Professor, Molecular and Medical Pharmacology; Member, Bioinformatics IDP, California NanoSystems Institute; Associate Member, Molecular Biology Institute; Member, Bioinformatics GPB Home Area, Genetics and Genomics GPB Home Area, Immunity, Microbes and Molecular Pathogenesis GPB Home Area; Molecular Pharmacology GPB Home Area

Biography:

Dr. Huiying Li is currently Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from UCLA on the studies of protein structure using X-ray crystallography and gene expression analysis by bioinformatics. After postdoctoral study at UCLA on microbial genomics and metagenomics, she joined the faculty at UCLA. Currently, she studies the human microbiome using genomics, metagenomics, bioinformatics, and microbiology approaches. Dr. Li’s team has been involved in the NIH funded Human Microbiome Project and studies the human skin, oral, and vaginal microbiomes in important diseases. As a recently recognized research area, microbiome studies offer new opportunities to understand human physiology in health and disease at both molecular and systems levels. These studies also offer opportunities in developing new diagnostics and therapeutics.

Research Description:

The current research in Dr. Li’s lab focuses on understanding the human microbiome, the collective genome of trillions of microorganisms residing in the human body, and its interactions with the host in relation to human health and diseases. Using multi-disciplinary approaches, including genomics, metagenomics, bioinformatics, high-throughput sequencing, microbiology, and biochemistry, the Li Lab aims to identify the molecular mechanism of the human microbiome in health and disease pathogenesis and to develop diagnostic markers and therapeutics for microorganism-related human diseases. By combining computational and experimental approaches, the ultimate goal of the research is to understand the human-microbiome symbiotic system at both molecular level and systems level.