First person – Yongli Zhang and Xuecheng Li

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Yongli Zhang and Xuecheng Li are co-first authors on ‘ SAXO proteins mediate tubulin turnover in axonemal microtubules of Chlamydomonas’, published in JCS. This work was carried out when both authors worked in the laboratory of Junmin Pan at Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, China. Xuecheng is a continuing his postdoc in that group investigating microalgal synthetic biology, ciliary biology and structural biology. Yongli is currently working as a lecturer in Guangdong Province, China, where she is initiating her independent research program in ciliary biology and the development and application of microalgae technology.