Li Lab
Principal Investigator: Sijin Li
Institution: Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
Primary Subfield: Synthetic Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary Opioid alternative analgesics that would kill pain potently without the respiratory side effect will be of specific importance in addressing the opioid crisis. The medicinal herb kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) produces natural products (mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine) that selectively activate analgesia only, which are promising “biased” opioid alternatives. Elucidating the kratom biosynthetic pathway composed of enzymes catalyzing sequential reactions toward the syntheses of mitragynine, 7-hydroxymitragynine, or other kratom products is important to the development of “biased” non-opioid analgesics. We propose to identify and reconstruct both the kratom biosynthetic pathways and the plant enzyme complexes organizing plant biosynthesis in yeast by integrating plant functional genomics analysis and synthetic biology. The research will provide new chemical and plant biology knowledge to a broader community, develop a post-translational level understanding of plant pathway regulation in yeast, and highlight the possibility of using synthetic biology to understand how nature achieves complicated natural product biosynthesis. This proposal will develop the conceptual…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01AT012633-03: Synthetic biology to discover kratom natural product biosynthetic pathways for biased analgesic development (2026)
- 5R01AT012633-02: Synthetic biology to discover kratom natural product biosynthetic pathways for biased analgesic development (2025)
- 1R01AT012633-01A1: Synthetic biology to discover kratom natural product biosynthetic pathways for biased analgesic development (2024)
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