THE LI LABORATORY

• Dr. Li has discovered a new method that could improve fly food preparation: the Soy Milk Machine Fly Food Method, a.k.a. DeepCook. Overnight, the method went viral around the world! It was soon featured on the website of the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC) as an efficient and reliable food preparation method.

• Dr. Li’s reflections on the reciprocal value of teaching for students and professors were featured in the News of the College of Arts & Sciences at Texas A&M University.​​​

• Texas and Texas A&M’s football rivalry was back. The Li lab presented “Rivalry” themed cake pops at the bake sale for the Biology Graduate Students' Association (BioGSA). Can you see the 12th man?

• PhD students Sydney Christensen and Doris Migliaccio from the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics and Genomics officially joined the Li Lab.

• ​

• Dr. Fumihiro Ito accomplished postdoctoral training and moved onto the bioinformatician position at Bioengineering Lab Co., Ltd.. Farewell and all the best!

•  

• Brissa Castillo, Kelsey Mainard, and Esther Doria started their PhDs at the Biology program.

The Li Lab presented two posters and a talk at the 2024 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) in beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico!

The Center for Biological Clocks Research at the Texas A&M University hosted the 2024 Texas Society for Circadian Biology & Medicine Meeting (TSCBM). Brissa Castillo, Fiona Gugala, and Kelsey Mainard received the poster awards. Dr. Li was awarded the TSCBM Ron Konopka Junior Faculty Award. Congratulations!

​Dr. Li presented our research at the Center for Circadian Biology annual symposium at UC San Diego.

We welcomed Esther Land back from Taiwan, China. Esther majored in International Studies with a minor in Mandarin Chinese as an undergraduate student at TAMU, and she studied away in Taiwan, China during the Fall 2023 semester. She was selected by the prestigious International Internship Pilot Program and studied in Dr. Lian Chu’s lab at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Environmental Science at the National Tsing Hua University.

The Li Lab has received a MIRA award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Read the news report for more details on the website of the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M University!

Installation day for our 2-photon microscope! Allie (the name of the microscope) has finally joined us after conquering the most severe global supply chain issues in the 21st century, laboratory renovation challenges (including a bidding process to source a contractor for asbestos abatement), and delivery difficulties (including moving in a 1000lb air table without an elevator). Texan men and immigrant men got the job done!

Dr. Jingjing Yan joins the laboratory as a Research Associate. Dr. Yan will use her expertise in molecular biology and genomics to explore the reciprocal relationship between chronic stress and the development of chronic diseases.

Dr. Fumihiro Ito has arrived from Japan! Dr. Ito is joining us as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. He will use his expertise in evolution biology to explore how chronic social isolation impacts health through the modification of health-critical behaviors.

Brissa Castillo officially joins the laboratory as a Lab Manager/Research Assistant. Brissa has worked in the Li lab since Fall 2022 as a Student Research Assistant, and she graduated from the Biomedical Sciences (BIMS) program in December 2022. Brissa is our very first “Aggie”! More Aggies are in the making in the Li Lab.

After learning diverse techniques during several rotations at different laboratory buildings on the Texas A&M campus and collecting various parking citations, first-year graduate student Eric Shah said “yes” to Dr. Li and happily joined the lab. Eric will develop a thesis project to investigate the timekeeping mechanisms during chronic social isolation. A doctor in the making!

Rotation student Eric Shah (Genetics Program), Student Research Assistant Esther Land (International Studies), and Dr. Li attended the 2022 symposium of the Texas Society for Biological Clocks and Medicine (TSCBM) at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston. What an amazing reunion for the chronobiologists in Texas after the pandemic. We are looking forward to the next TSCBM symposium, which will be hosted by the Center for Biological Clocks at Texas A&M University.

Our paper, titled “Chronic sleep loss disrupts rhythmic gene expression in Drosophila,” was published on Nov 18th, the w1118 World Drosophila Day! Check out Dr. Li thread on Twitter about the findings we made and an interactive web portal for around-the-clock gene expression in Drosophila.

Grant proposal submission, travel for Drosophila Central Complex Meeting at the Janelia Farm Research Campus, travel for SfN meeting at San Diego, travel for invited seminars, severe reactions to the bivalent booster, kids’ baseball season, and coverage for spouse’s business trips - Dr. Li conducted a real sleep deprivation experiment on herself. However, she felt it was really worth it when she reunited with the amazing people whom she met through science for these many years.