Yixue Li , Shanghai Bioinformatics

Center

Yi-Xue Li was born in Xinjiang , China . He entered Xinjiang University in March 1978. Currently, he is the director in Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology and a full research professor at Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Li received his BSc. and Msc. degrees in theoretical physics from Xinjiang University , China , in 1982 and 1987, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1996. After Dr. Li got his Ph.D. degree he worked as a bioinformatics research staff in European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) from 1997-2000, and came back to Shanghai , China in the middle of 2000.

Dr.Li's research interests include bioinformatics, systems biology and computational biology. Dr. Li has published more than 70 journal papers with over 60 papers (total IF >200) published in various SCI journals, and his research results have been cited by more than 500 researchers worldwide in books, theses, journal and conference papers. He has served as a reviewer/panelist for many national research foundations/agencies such as the Chinese National Science Foundation, the National High-Tech Program(863) and National Key Basic Research Program(973). Dr. Li has served as an editorial board member for 5 journals including 3 SCI journals. He has organized several international conferences and workshops and has also served as a program committee member for several major national and international conferences like GIW, HUPO and National Bioinformatics Conference etc.

Dr. Li has delivered over 40 invited talks, including keynote speeches and colloquium talks, at conferences and universities domestics and worldwide. Dr. Li is the chairman of Shanghai Bioinformatics Society.

Tentative Title: Insights into the Coupling of Duplication Events and Macroevolution from an Age Profile of Animal Transmembrane Gene Families

abstract: The evolution of new gene families subsequent to gene duplication may be coupled to the fluctuation of population and environment variables. Based upon that, we presented a systematic analysis of the animal transmembrane gene duplication events on a macroevolutionary scale by integrating the palaeontology repository. The age of duplication events was calculated by maximum likelihood method, and the age distribution was estimated by density histogram and normal kernel density estimation. We showed that the density of the duplicates displays a positive correlation with the estimates of maximum number of cell types of common ancestors, and the oxidation events played a key role in the major transitions of this density trace. Next, we focused on the Phanerozoic phase, during which more macroevolution data are available. The pulse mass extinction timepoints coincide with the local peaks of the age distribution, suggesting that the transmembrane gene duplicates fixed frequently when the environment changed dramatically. Moreover, a 61-million-year cycle is the most possible cycle in this phase by spectral analysis, which is consistent with the cycles recently detected in biodiversity. Our data thus elucidate a strong coupling of duplication events and macroevolution; furthermore, our method also provides a new way to address these questions.