Jie Li

Jie Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, affiliated with the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on leveraging microbial natural products for drug discovery, particularly through genome mining, biosynthetic pathway elucidation, and engineering. He holds a B.S. (2005) and M.S. (2008) from Sichuan University, and a Ph.D. (2014) in Pharmaceutical Sciences from The Ohio State University, followed by postdoctoral training at UC San Diego.

Research interests include discovering novel antimicrobial agents, understanding biosynthetic mechanisms of natural products, and developing biocatalysts. Notable achievements include the discovery of sulfenicin (a novel natural product with acylsulfenic acid), gut microbiota-derived sulfonolipids with anti-inflammatory roles, and engineered lantipeptides. His work bridges chemistry, microbiology, and pharmacology to address unmet medical needs in cancer, inflammation, and infectious diseases.

• Grants & Awards: NSF CAREER Award (2023), NIH R35 MIRA Award (2023), McCausland Faculty Fellow (2024), Distinguished Undergraduate Mentor (2025).
• Lab Activities: Focus on microbial genome mining, heterologous expression systems, and metabolomics-driven discovery. Collaborates on anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and anti-infective agents.
• Teaching: Courses in Biochemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry.

His lab has pioneered methods for connecting biosynthetic enzymes to disease relevance, such as linking sulfonolipids to IBD via TLR4 signaling. Over $3.1M in extramural funding supports ongoing projects in microbial drug discovery and synthetic biology.