Qianjun Li, Ph.D.

Biography

Qianjun Li, Ph.D. is a research scientist for the Emerging Infectious Disease Research Program at Southern Research. He is also appointed as Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Geographic Medicine, Department of Medicine at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Li is also an active member of the American Society of Virology, and the Society for Invertebrate Pathology.

Dr. Li's research program offers a variety of research expertise on Arthropod borne viruses (arboviruses), including Flavivirus (Dengue, yellow fever and West Nile virus), Alphavirus (Western Equine Encephalitis) and orbivirus (Bluetongue virus). Dr. Li's current research focuses are: general characterization of Flavivirus, Alphavirus, and Bluetongue virus, including the virus replication cycle, structure, and pathogenesis; and hosts-virus interaction during arbovirus infection, the role of apoptosis during arbovirus infection, and the different apoptotic machineries in different hosts.

Research Interests

Arboviruses are important human and/or animal pathogens that cause severe diseases, even death. Human pathogens include Dengue virus, West Nile virus, yellow fever, and Western Equine Encephalitis; Bluetongue virus (BTV) is an animal pathogen. Arboviruses are unique because they are transmitted to their vertebrate hosts by arthropod vectors; therefore, they must be capable of replicating in two very divergent host taxa, vertebrates and insects. Although arboviruses replicate efficiently in both vertebrate and insect cells, the respective hosts' cellular responses are quite different.

For example, BTV, a member of Reoviridae, is a non-enveloped, multi-layered, double-stranded RNA virus. BTV is transmitted to vertebrate by certain species of Culicoides biting midge, and replicates in both vertebrate and insect hosts, but only causes severe "bluetongue" disease in vertebrate hosts, such as sheep, goats and deer. BTV infection induces a rapid apoptotic response in vertebrate cells, whereas such apoptotic response in insect cells is not apparent, despite the productive virus replication in both cells. While apoptosis has been positively linked to arbovirus diseases in infected animals, vector insects showed no detectable signs of any diseases. Little attention has been paid to the significance of arbovirus induced cellular responses in insect vectors and the possibility of adapting such antiviral strategy to the protection of vertebrate hosts from arbovirus induced apoptotic responses and diseases. The ability of BTV to replicate in distinct cell types and induce the different respective host cell apoptotic responses provides an ideal model system to study host apoptotic responses during arbovirus infections. Such studies will extend knowledge of host-vector-pathogen interactions, and will also assist in developing new strategies to prevent and control arbovirus infection.

An active research group is also focused on the general characterization of arbovirus replication, assembly and pathogenesis are current in progress.