One of Dr. Li’s current major research interests is computational genomics. He is developing methods for statistical analyses of genomic sequence data and gene expression data. One major effort is to develop methods and computer programs for aligning genomic sequences, which cannot be aligned by traditional methods because of its scale and because of frequent genomic rearrangenments such as translocations, transpositions, deletions, insertions, etc. As sequence alignment is often the first step in sequence analysis and as huge amounts of genomic sequence data are now available, alignment methods are urgently needed. Another major effort is to use microarray gene expression data to study how duplicate genes diverge in expression. This is important for understanding how duplicate genes are retained and diverge in function because divergence in expression is often the first step in functional divergence.

Dr. Li’s second major research interest lies in human DNA sequence variation. Our aim is to understand the level and pattern of DNA sequence variation within and between human populations and the mechanisms of maintenance of genetic variability.

Dr. Li’s third major research interest is how the molecular interactions between growth hormone and its receptor have evolved in time and among different primate species.