Yonghua Li-Beisson is a Senior Scientist at CEA (the French Atomic and Alternative Energies Commission) and also at Aix-Marseille University. Currently she is the head of the team “microalgae and bioenergy” and also leading the European platform “HelioBiotec” at CEA Cadarache. She received a BSc in Lipid Chemistry from Henan University of Technology, China, a PhD in Biological Sciences from University of Hull, England. Dr. Li-Beisson was a Postdoctoral fellow at University of Oxford and at Michigan State University, where she made several discoveries in the biosynthesis of plant-specific lipid polyesters. She also coordinated a worldwide effort to catalog lipid genes and map lipid pathways in Arabidopsis, a widely accessible online resource (Aralip). Dr. Li-Beisson’s research focuses on uncovering the genes and pathways underlying lipid metabolism, and the use of such knowledge to increase oil content and/or producing industrially important fatty acids. Current work focuses on dissection of lipid pathways and the interplay between these and other cellular metabolism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii using a combination of forward/reverse genetic approaches and lipidomic analysis.
Areas of expertise: lipid metabolism, lipidomics, triacylglycerols, alkanes, lipid polyesters, stress response, lipid droplet, biofuel, Chlamydomonas, Arabidopsis.
Editorial experience: Plant Cell (2015-); mSphere (2012-); Plant and Cell Physiology (2015-).
Honors and awards include: Postgraduate studentship for PhD studies; Members of the Scientific Committee for International Symposium on Plant Lipids (ISPL) (2012 Seville; 2014 Guelph; 2016 Gottingen; 2018 Yokohama); Discussion Leader for Gordon Research Conferences on Plant Lipids: Structure, Metabolism and Function (2015 Texas); Advisory board member for ‘Colin Ratledge Center for Lipid Research” in Shangdong University of Technology (China).