2021-present, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University. 

2015-2021, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley. 

2009-2014, Ph.D. in Crop Genetics and Breeding, China Agricultural University.

Our group focuses primarily on the diversity and functional studies of crop microbial communities, exploring the interactions between microbial communities and host crops. A comprehensive approach involving techniques such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics, molecular genetics, and systems biology is employed to investigate the biological functions of rhizospheric and foliar microbial communities in crop growth and development, nutrient coordination, and stress resistance. The goal is to uncover the potential of microbial communities in promoting crop growth.

Sun, J., Lu, F., Luo, Y., Bie, L., Xu, L. ^*, &Wang, Y. ^* (2023). OrthoVenn3: an integrated platform for exploring and visualizing orthologous data across genomes, Nucleic Acids Research. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkad313.

Gao, C.^#*, Xu, L.^#, Montoya, L., Madera, M., Hollingsworth, J., Chen, L., Purdom, E., Singan, V., Vogel, J., Hutmacher, R. B., Dahlberg, J. A., Coleman-Derr, D., Lemaux, P. G., &Taylor, J. W.^* (2022). Co-occurrence networks reveal more complexity than community composition in resistance and resilience of microbial communities. Nature Communications. 13(1), 3867.

Xu, L.^*, Dong, Z., Chiniquy, D., Pierroz, G, Deng, S., Gao, C., Diamond, S., Simmons, T., Wipf, H. M-L., Caddell, D., Varoquaux, N., Madera, M. A., Hutmacher, R., Deutschbauer, A., Dahlberg, J. A.; Guerinot, M. L., Purdom, E., Banfield, J. F., Taylor, J. W., Lemaux, P. G., & Coleman-Derr, D.^* (2021). Genome resolved metagenomics reveals role of iron metabolism in drought induced rhizosphere microbiome dynamics, Nature Communications. 12(1), 3209.

Xu, L., Pierroz, G., Wipf, H. M.-L., Gao, C., Taylor, J. W., Lemaux, P. G., & Coleman-Derr, D.^* (2021). Holo-omics for deciphering plant-microbiome interactions. Microbiome. 9(1), 69.

Jia, A.^#, Xu, L.^#, & Wang, Y.^* (2021). Venn diagrams in bioinformatics. Briefings in Bioinformatics. DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbab108

Dong, Z.^#, Xu, Z.^#, Xu, L.^#, Galli, M., Gallavotti, A., Dooner, H. K.^*, & Chuck, G.^* (2020). Necrotic upper tips1 mimics heat and drought stress and encodes a protoxylem-specific transcription factor in maize. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 117(34): 20908-20919.

Wipf, H. M.-L., Xu, L., Gao, C., Spinner, H. B., Taylor, J., Lemaux, P., Mitchell, J., & Coleman-Derr, D.^* (2020). Agricultural Soil Management Practices Differentially Shape the Bacterial and Fungal Microbiome of Sorghum bicolor. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 87(5).

Gao, C., Montoya, L., Xu, L., Madera, M., Hollingsworth, J., Purdom, E., Singan, V., Vogel, J., Hutmacher, R. B., Dahlberg, J. A., Coleman-Derr, D., Lemaux, P. G., & Taylor, J. W.^* (2020). Fungal community assembly in drought-stressed sorghum shows stochasticity, selection, and universal ecological dynamics. Nature Communications. 11(1), 34.

Xu, L., & Coleman-Derr, D^*. (2019). Causes and consequences of a conserved bacterial root microbiome response to drought stress. Current Opinion in Microbiology. 49, 1–6.

Xu, L.^#, Dong, Z.^#, Fang, L., Luo, Y., Wei, Z., Guo, H., Zhang, G., Gu, Y. Q., Coleman-Derr, D., Xia, Q., & Wang, Y.^* (2019). OrthoVenn2: a web server for whole-genome comparison and annotation of orthologous clusters across multiple species. Nucleic Acids Research. 47(W1), W52–W58.

Gao, C., Montoya, L., Xu, L., Madera, M., Hollingsworth, J., Purdom, E., Hutmacher, R. B., Dahlberg, J. A., Coleman-Derr, D., Lemaux, P. G., & Taylor, J. W.^* (2019). Strong succession in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities. The ISME Journal. 13(1), 214–226.

Varoquaux, N.^#, Cole, B.^#, Gao, C.^#, Pierroz, G., Baker, C. R., Patel, D., Madera, M., Jeffers, T., Hollingsworth, J., Sievert, J., Yoshinaga, Y., Owiti, J. A., Singan, V. R., DeGraaf, S., Xu, L., Blow, M. J., Harrison, M. J., Visel, A., Jansson, C., Niyogi, K. K., Hutmacher R., Coleman-Derr D., Malley R. C.O’; Taylor, J. W., Dahlberg J., Vogel J. P. ^*, Lemaux, P. G.^*, & Elizabeth Purdom^* (2019). Transcriptomic analysis of field-droughted sorghum from seedling to maturity reveals biotic and metabolic responses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 116(52): 27124-27136.

Xu, L., Naylor, D., Dong, Z., Simmons, T., Pierroz, G., Hixson, K. K., Kim, Y.-M., Zink, E. M., Engbrecht, K. M., Wang, Y., Gao, C., DeGraaf, S., Madera, M. A., Sievert, J. A., Hollingsworth, J., Birdseye, D., Scheller, H. V., Hutmacher, R., Dahlberg, J., Jansson C., Taylor J. W., Lemaux P. J., & Coleman-Derr, D.^* (2018). Drought delays development of the sorghum root microbiome and enriches for monoderm bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 115(18), E4284–E4293.

Dong, Z.^#, Yu, J.^#, Li, H., Huang, W., Xu, L., Zhao, Y., Zhang, T., Xu, W., Jiang, J., Su, Z.^*, & Jin, W.^* (2018). Transcriptional and epigenetic adaptation of maize chromosomes in Oat-Maize addition lines. Nucleic Acids Research. 46(10), 5012–5028.

Wang, Y., Xu, L., Thilmony, R., You, F. M., Gu, Y. Q.^*, & Coleman-Derr, D.^* (2017). PIECE 2.0: an update for the plant gene structure comparison and evolution database. Nucleic Acids Research, 45(D1). 1015–1020.

Wang, Y., Xu, L., Gu, Y. Q., & Coleman-Derr, D.^* (2016). MetaCoMET: a web platform for discovery and visualization of the core microbiome. Bioinformatics. 32(22), 3469–3470.

Xu, L., Zhang, Y., Shao, S., Chen, W., Tan, J., Zhu, M., Zhong, T., Fan, X., & Xu, M.^* (2014). High-resolution mapping and characterization of qRgls2, a major quantitative trait locus involved in maize resistance to gray leaf spot. BMC Plant Biology. 14, 230.