- Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Qin Li is Assistant Professor of Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine. He received his BS in biological sciences from Peking University in 2009 and his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Peking University in 2014, completing postdoctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine in the laboratory of Jin Billy Li before joining Penn in 2024.
The Li laboratory studies how cells discriminate self from non-self at the RNA level through adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing catalyzed by ADAR enzymes — a process that prevents MDA5-driven sensing of endogenous double-stranded RNAs. His landmark Nature 2022 paper demonstrated that RNA editing quantitative trait loci (edQTLs) are strongly enriched among GWAS signals for inflammatory and autoimmune disease, providing a unifying molecular framework linking common genetic variation to chronic interferon signaling and autoimmunity.
Dr. Li is a core investigator within the Penn Center for Genome Integrity and a member of the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health, the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, and the Penn Colton Center for Autoimmunity. His work positions Penn at the forefront of understanding the RNA editing–autoimmunity axis and offers a foundation for therapeutic targeting of self-RNA sensing in autoimmune disease.