By Isaac GuererroStaff writer

Xue-Jun Li spends her days studying motor neurons, the cells that send signals from the brain to the body's voluntary muscles.

Motor neuron diseases are degenerative, which means that the muscles don't stop working all at once. When the motor neurons begin to fail, one slowly loses control of the arms and legs, the ability to swallow and, eventually, to breathe.

Scientists know very little about the human nervous system and what causes the motor neurons to stop functioning. Li has published more than 37 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has developed human stem cell models for spastic paraplegias and spinal muscular atrophy, which is the leading genetic cause of death for infants.

Li joined the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford as an associate professor in the Biomedical Sciences Department last May. Her research is supported by the National Institute of Health and ALS Association, among others.

I love the satisfaction of new discoveries, new ideas you get from working in the lab, the interaction with students, she said. But any breakthrough you make is a collaboration.

Her stem cell research is concerned with, among other things, an attempt to better understand microtubule defects that disrupt signals from the brain to motor neurons along the spinal cord. Mitochondrial defects the mitochondria are the energy factories of the cells are another focus.

This fall, Li will teach a class that's a first for the university: stem cells and regenerative engineering.

Isaac Guerrero: 815-987-1361; iguerrero@rrstar.com;@isaac_rrs

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Transform 815: Xue Jun-Li's stem cell research in Rockford sheds light on motor neuron diseases - Rockford Register Star