Xu Jianzhong is mainly engaged in the application of microbial metabolic engineering and synthetic biology technology to build a high-efficiency microbial cell factory to produce fine chemicals, and analyze the metabolic control mechanism of high-yield strains. He presided over 3 national, provincial, and ministerial scientific research projects, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the natural science foundation of Jiangsu Province, and won the first prize of scientific and technological progress of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation.