Wenwei Li

Department of Oncology

Assistant Professor

wenwei.li@wisc.edu

1111 Highland Ave, WIMR II 6451
Madison, WI 535705

Education

BS, Biology, Wuhan University, China
PhD, Developmental Biology, Wuhan University, China
Postdoctoral Research, Tumor Virology, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Associate Research Scientist, Structural Biology and Virology, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Research Areas

• Membrane and Cellular Biophysics
• Protein folding, design & function
• Spectroscopy, Microscopy, Imaging

Virus-host interactions; membrane recognition and organization; structural virology; cryo-electron microscopy/tomography

My laboratory seeks to decipher how membrane protein organization is established, remodeled, and interpreted during infection and immunity. Rather than focusing on isolated proteins, we investigate membrane-interface recognition events in which proteins anchored in opposing membranes assemble into functional complexes during pathogen entry and immune recognition. These processes have remained difficult to study because membrane interfaces are transient, heterogeneous, and challenging to capture under native conditions. To overcome these challenges, my laboratory is developing a modular membrane engineering platform based on interacting virus-like particles (VLPs) that reconstructs biologically relevant membrane interfaces. By integrating quantitative structural analysis with cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM), cryo-electron tomography (cryoET), and correlative in situ cryo-focused ion beam (cryo-FIB), we seek to visualize membrane protein assemblies from near-atomic resolution to their native cellular environment.