Harnessing Microbial Cell Factories to Explore Plant Secondary Metabolism
ature is the best synthetic chemist, and plants produce an extraordinary diversity of secondary metabolites with significant pharmaceutical and agricultural value. However, the development and application of many plant-derived molecules are hindered by the limited accessibility, which often fall short of both research and market demands. For instance, phytohormones, critical regulators of plant growth and development, have shown promising potential in agriculture, yet their commercial use remains limited due to their extremely low abundance in nature.
To address this challenge, the Li Laboratory is developing microbial cell factories as a sustainable and scalable approach to produce high-value plant secondary metabolites. By engineering microbial hosts to mimic the plant cellular environment, we enable the functional reconstitution of plant metabolic pathways and enzymes. These microbial platforms not only allow for efficient biomanufacturing but also serve as powerful tools to investigate plant metabolism and uncover previously unknown molecules of essential biological functions. Our work contributes to both fundamental understanding of plant secondary metabolism and practical applications in agriculture and medicine.
Bio: Yanran Li is an associate professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. She obtained her bachelor’s degrees in chemistry from Nankai University and chemical engineering from Tianjin University. She then pursued her Ph.D. degree with Yi Tang at the University of California, Los Angeles, working on elucidating and engineering the biosynthesis of bacterial and fungal aromatic polyketides. She then spent one year in Rustem Ismagilov’s lab at Caltech, using microfluidic devices to investigate microbial interactions. From 2013 to 2016, she was a postdoctoral fellow in Christina Smolke’s lab at Stanford, working on the engineered biosynthesis of plant alkaloids in yeast. The Li Lab at UC San Diego work on harnessing yeast to investigate and engineering plant secondary metabolism and signaling complex. Yanran Li is recognized by NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and NSF CAREER Award.