Yun Li, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Scientist, The Hospital for Sick Children

SFARI Investigator Website

Yun Li received her B.S. in biology from Wuhan University. She obtained her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the laboratory of Luis Parada, where she studied the role of neurotrophic factors in the development and function of the adult brain.

Li did her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was supported by a Simons Center for the Social Brain postdoctoral fellowship, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award and an International Rett Syndrome Foundation fellowship for her studies into the cellular mechanisms of human neurodevelopmental disorders.

Li is currently a principal investigator at The Hospital for Sick Children and assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Her lab studies human brain development under physiological and pathological conditions using pluripotent stem cells, genome-engineering and 2-D/3-D culture platforms.

Funded Projects

Modeling autism using genome engineering in human 2-D and 3-D neural systems

Awarded: 2019
Award Type: Bridge to Independence

SFARI Funded Publications

MeCP2-regulated miRNAs control early human neurogenesis through differential effects on ERK and AKT signaling. Mellios N., Feldman D.A., Sheridan S.D., Ip J.P.K., Kwok S., Amoah S.K., Rosen B., Rodriguez B.A., Crawford B., Swaminathan R., Chou S., Li Y., Ziats M., Ernst C., Jaenisch R., Haggarty S.J., Sur M.

Efficient derivation of microglia-like cells from human pluripotent stem cells. Muffat J., Li Y., Yuan B., Mitalipova M., Omer A., Corcoran S., Bakiasi G., Tsai L., Aubourg P., Ransohoff R., Jaenisch R.

Research Highlight

In vivo interrogation of gene function in the mammalian brain using CRISPR-Cas9. Swiech L., Heidenreich M., Banerjee A., Habib N., Li Y., Trombetta J., Sur M., Zhang F.