
Jun Li
Associate Professor
Biological Sciences; Biomolecular Sciences Institute
Office: OE 250B
Phone: 405-325-9385
Email: lij@fiu.edu
Research Areas
Mosquitoes transmit many diseases including malaria and the recent Zika virus. Li's research focuses on pathogen infection pathways using combinational approaches of genomics, chemistry
- Using bioinformatics approaches to analyze the genome sequences and to visualize data
- Genome-wide association approach to find mosquito genes of interest
- Biochemical and molecular biology approaches to investigate the function of the candidate trait-related gene
- Develop vaccines and small molecule drugs targeting the pathways
More about Dr. Li's Research
Mosquitoes transmit many diseases, including Zika and malaria. Malaria alone is responsible for about two hundred million clinical cases worldwide and kills nearly one million people each year. Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites that are transmitted by anopheline mosquitoes. Zika can trigger paralysis and birth defects. Inhibiting pathogen development in mosquitoes will block disease transmission. My research aims to find target genes that are essential for pathogen transmission in mosquitoes. Moreover, we develop drugs targeting these critical genes to stop disease transmission.
By genomic approaches, we discovered that the fibrinogen-related protein 1 (FREP1) is critical for malaria parasite infection in Anopheles