Logo and Mission
Our logo embodies our mission to build a simple, productive, and welcoming environment for discoveries that ultimately improve human, animal, and ecological health.
We imagine DNA as a mountain range, where the genetic code of life is embedded. RNA is represented as the flowing valley between the mountains: open, dynamic, and connective. RNA carries information from the genome, but it also responds rapidly to environmental change and reshapes cellular and organismal states through its stability, translation, modification, processing, degradation, and small RNA pathways.
The open valley symbolizes humility, inclusiveness, and convergence. We hope the Center will become a place where RNA biology, environmental health, reproductive medicine, comparative biology, artificial intelligence, and RNA therapeutics meet. The tree growing in the valley represents the fruits of scientific discovery: knowledge that grows from fundamental research and ultimately serves human, animal, and ecosystem health.
Our mission is:
To pursue rigorous science with humility, to understand life adaptation through RNA, and to translate these discoveries into better health for humans, animals, and the environment.
Research Theme
RNA Biology of Life Adaptation
Life does not exist in isolation. Organisms constantly face changing external environments, including toxins, pathogens, diet, climate, and the microbiome. They also face internal challenges, such as transposons, genome instability, metabolic disease, inflammation, aging, and disease states.
Classical molecular biology emphasizes the information flow:
DNA → RNA → Protein
Our research focuses on another equally important but often overlooked path:
Environment → RNA Fate → Life State
We propose that the environment can directly reshape RNA fate, not only DNA sequence. External environmental factors and internal physiological states can alter RNA transcription, splicing, modification, translation, stability, degradation, and small RNA pathways. These RNA-level changes can, in turn, influence cell fate, organ function, reproduction, disease progression, health, and, in certain contexts, the next generation.
Our central scientific question is:
How does environmental information reshape life through RNA, and when can this information affect offspring?
This perspective also changes how we think about disease. The environment can cause disease, but disease itself can become a new internal environment. A disease state may alter how the body absorbs, distributes, metabolizes, eliminates, and transmits environmental factors, thereby amplifying existing risks or creating new ones.
Therefore, precision medicine should not only treat damaged organs or downstream symptoms. It should also identify and intervene in the external and internal environmental factors that continue to drive disease.
Why RNA?
RNA occupies a central position in biological information flow. It connects relatively stable genomic information with functional protein output, but it is also highly dynamic, plastic, and responsive to environmental change.
RNA is not merely an intermediate between DNA and protein. It can act as a regulatory molecule, information carrier, defense tool, and therapeutic agent. Transcription, splicing, RNA modification, translation, degradation, and small RNA pathways together determine RNA fate, enabling organisms to adjust rapidly to changing conditions.
From an evolutionary perspective, RNA is an ancient and flexible information system. It participates in gene regulation, germline defense, environmental response, intergenerational effects, and therapeutic intervention. Studying RNA allows us to understand how life adapts without necessarily changing DNA sequence.
Why Study RNA at the Whole-Organism Level?
Adaptation and disease ultimately occur at the level of the whole organism. Many mechanisms appear clear in isolated systems, yet fail to explain organ interaction, metabolic state, reproductive function, and intergenerational effects when placed back into a living body.
Environmental challenges do not act only on single cells. They affect tissues, organs, metabolism, reproduction, and offspring health. Here, “environment” includes external factors such as toxins, pathogens, diet, microbiome, and climate, as well as internal states such as metabolic disease, inflammation, aging, and endocrine changes.
We view many diseases not as isolated abnormalities of a single organ, but as systemic imbalances under persistent environmental pressure. If the external or internal drivers of disease are not identified and removed, directly treating the damaged organ may not lead to durable recovery.
For this reason, we study RNA regulation in whole organisms. We ask how environmental conditions alter organ function, metabolic state, and reproductive systems; how these changes are encoded through RNA; and how they influence cell fate, disease progression, and offspring phenotypes.
Germ cells are especially important because they connect generations. They must preserve genome integrity, yet they may also carry molecular traces of parental environmental experience.
Comparative Biology and One Health
Different organisms share the same ecosystem. Many environmental challenges affect not only humans, but also animals, microbes, and ecological networks. Heavy metals, pathogens, diet change, climate change, domestication, and intensive farming all leave interconnected effects on human and animal health.
We view biological diversity as a living museum of adaptive strategies. Birds, mammals, reptiles, microbes, and domesticated animals face similar pressures but evolve different solutions. Comparing these strategies helps us identify general principles of life adaptation.
This comparative perspective is also aligned with One Health. Human health, animal health, and environmental health are not separate problems. Zoonotic disease, shared environmental exposure, agricultural animal health, food safety, and ecological change all require us to understand biological mechanisms across species.
Just as CRISPR was first discovered as a bacterial defense system against viruses and later became a transformative biological tool, RNA-based adaptive mechanisms in diverse species may inspire new strategies for diagnosis, therapy, breeding, and environmental health.
One Health is not only a public health slogan; it is a biological framework for understanding shared mechanisms among humans, animals, and the environment.
Blurbs
"In working closely with Xin, it is clear that his leadership and mentorship encourage a collegial, collaborative working environment that truly nurtures his lab members' passions and potential. The Li Lab is continuously innovating and breaking the current boundaries of science to uncover exciting new directions in the RNA field. Having worked in a number of labs, it is quite rare to see the level of collaboration, innovation, and productivity present here.”
- John, currently in MD/PhD program at University of Minnesota
"Having stayed in a few labs, the Li lab has always been my favorite as both Dr. Li and the graduate students are always willing to listen to you and help. I joined the lab with nothing but an interest in sequencing and despite the lab members spending so much time training me, they did so without any sense of impatience. The environment within the lab is super friendly, it is not only a lab, but also a home for everyone."
- Hanwen, currently in Master's program at Imperial Business School
"Throughout my PhD training, the Li lab has provided me with the very best support by leading the cutting-edge research in the field, adopting multidisciplinary approaches to solve challenging projects, and publishing multiple research papers, helping me to be competitive for my future career.”
– Yu, Scientist at Biogene
"As an undergraduate, I find the lab environment to be very collaborative; despite Dr. Li, graduate students, and the lab technician always being so busy, they always find time to help you. I have learned a lot and acquired plenty of new skills since joining this lab!”
- Yifan, currently in DVM program at the Ohio State University
"I have the opportunity to engage in intellectual conversations that enable individual growth both inside and outside of the lab on a daily basis.”
– Kadijah, Toxicologist at Sherwin-Williams
