Quanzi Li

My research interests focus on understanding the lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses biosynthesis during wood formation. Understanding the gene functions involved in wood formation will allow us to generate transgenic trees with modified contents and structures of lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses in wood, and lead us to reach the goal of reducing the cost during pulp, paper and biofuel production. As a project manager, my role in the NSF project “Regulation and modeling of lignin biosynthesis” is to help the PI on the planning and execution of a project from start to finish. My involvement in the experiments is to characterize the gene functions of two lignin pathway families (CAD and C3H), including transformation, characterization of the transgenic plants. I am also conducting the kinetic assay of five lignin enzymes, CAD1, CAD2, HCT1, HCT6 and CCR2.