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In 1957, the movie "Long Friendship" was released. This is the first film in New China with scientists as the protagonist, telling the story of friendship between scientists in the development of new antibiotics.
The film is based on real people and real events.
Chlortetracycline is an important antibiotic, in 1953 the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Shanghai Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences undertook the task of developing chlortetracycline, and in 1957, chlortetracycline was officially put into operation in the third pharmaceutical factory in Shanghai, and China became the fourth country in the world that can produce chlortetracycline.
The scientist to be introduced today is the 102-year-old academician Shen Shanjiong, who is one of the prototypes of the protagonist of the movie and the core figure in the development of chlortetracycline.
Academician Shen Shanjiong
Cultivate heirlooms, bumpy roads to study
In 1917, Shen Shanjiong was born in a peasant family in Wujiang, Jiangsu Province. "Cultivating and reading heirlooms" is the ancestral precept of the Shen family, although the family is poor, but the parents try their best to let the children accept well.
In 1937, Shen Shanjiong was admitted to Jinling University, and due to the cheap tuition fee, he chose to apply for an agricultural major instead of an undergraduate. At this time, the war had spread on the land of China, so Shen Shanjiong's university life was particularly turbulent.
Teenager Shen Shanjiong
From the special training class of the Central Political School in Wuhan, the College of Agriculture of Guangxi University, to Yunnan University, Shen Shanjiong was finally admitted to the Southwest United University in Kunming.
The Southwest United University, which was temporarily established by Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University, three universities, although the hardware was rudimentary, the teachers were all famous scholars in China at that time. Zhu Ziqing, Wu Han, Yang Shixian... were all former teachers of Shen Shanjiong.
Although Shen Shanjiong has a thin face and speaks a Shanghai dialect, he studies diligently, thinks actively, is good at asking questions, and is favored by Professor Zhang Jingyu, a teacher of plant morphology. Zhang Jingyu saw that he was interested in microbes and sent him to Dai Fanglan's laboratory at the Institute of Agriculture of Tsinghua University.
All independent research funds for agricultural research at Tsinghua University do not belong to Southwest United University. At the Institute of Agriculture, Shen Completed His Undergraduate Thesis.
Shen Shanjiong, who has been hanging in the living room of the Shen family, handwritten the southwest united university school song
In 1942, after graduating from Shen Shanjiong University, he stayed at the Agricultural Research Institute. He began to study fungi under the guidance of Dai Fanglan.
Dai Fanglan's requirements are very strict, he requires that researchers in the laboratory must be fully attentive when working, can not study foreign languages during working hours, and even the relevant reference books cannot be read in the laboratory.
He would come to the lab every morning and ask, "Did you find something new?" Under the influence of Dai Fanglan, Shen Shanjiong gradually became interested in microbial genetics.
The old house where the Plant Pathology Group of the Tsinghua Agricultural Research Institute of Puji, a large Puji, in the northern suburbs of Kunming, stayed
Professor Zhang Jingyu visited the University of California, Berkeley for a one-year academic visit in the United States, during which he recommended Shen Shanjiong to Bidel, head of the Biology Department at the California Institute of Technology.
Caltech is one of the most difficult schools in the United States to apply to, and a large number of scientists such as Qian Xuesen, Zheng Zhemin, Zhuang Fenggan, Xie Jialin and so on have graduated here. Biddle was also a major figure in the biological world at the time, winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958.
With the help of Hu Shi, the president of Peking University at that time, Shen Shanjiong completed the formalities for going abroad. Before leaving, Professor Zhang Jingyu invited him to dinner at home and said to him, "I am waiting for you, and I hope that you will come back after completing your studies." "
He continued his studies in genetics and returned to China to be detained
At Southwest United University Shen Shanjiong learned how to behave, and at Caltech he learned how to do science.
It was the heyday of Caltech's Biology Department, which was very open and inclusive. Molecular genetics is being born here, and Shen Shanjiong is here where he is exposed to cutting-edge research work.
In 1950, Shen Shanjiong completed his doctoral thesis "On the Genetics and Biochemistry of the Relationship between Complexine and Cysteine in Streptomyces vulgaris". He found that the formation of streptomycessinase was inhibited by temperature and sulfur-containing compounds.
Although the thesis defense was successfully passed, Shen Shanjiong was not satisfied, and felt that there was no work that had not yet been completed, and there were still important contents that could be analyzed in depth.
After graduating with a Ph.D., Shen plans to work in the United States for two years. However, on August 23, when Qian Xuesen was banned from leaving the country and was censored and detained, Shen Shanjiong immediately booked a ticket to return to China on August 31.
Shen Shanjiong's mentor Horowitz was on vacation at this time, and he immediately rushed back to say goodbye to Shen Shanjiong. He told Shen Shanjiong that he already had the ability to work independently and should have confidence in everything after returning to China. Horowitz also wrote a letter to Shen Shanjiong, asking him to open it after he returned to China.
October 1978 with teacher Norman Horowitz
On August 31, Shen Shanjiong boarded a cruise ship back to China. He also returned to China with more than 100 Chinese students, including nuclear physicist Zhao Zhongyao and aerodynamic Luo Shijun.
As the ship sailed to Honolulu, Hawaii, Shen Shanjiong, Zhao Zhongyao, and Luo Shijun were unjustifiably detained by the CIA and thrown into Sugamo Prison in Shimono, Tokyo. On September 22, the international students on the ship arrived in Guangzhou, and the news of Shen Shanjiong's detention was known.
Under international pressure, they were taken out of prison on 31 October. On November 17, Shen Shanjiong finally left Japan by boat and returned to his homeland on the 21st of that month.
In September 1950, Zhao Zhongyao, Luo Shijun and Shen Shanjiong took photos at The Duck Nest Prison in Japan. They resolutely refused to return to the United States or go to Taiwan, and they fought for more than two years
At this time, Shen Shanjiong had the opportunity to open the teacher's letter. In the letter, the teacher instructed him to fight for the opportunity to do more biochemical genetic work.
Successfully developed chlortetracycline, making history
After returning to the motherland, Shen Shanjiong was first introduced by Tan Jiazhen and Professor Ding Zhenlin to the Department of Biochemistry of Zhejiang University School of Medicine as an associate professor. Then, in 1952, on the recommendation of Zhang Jingyu, he went to the Institute of Experimental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.
Here, he met Yin Hongzhang, a former teacher at Southwest United University. Yin Hongzhang invited Shen Shanjiong to work in the Plant Physiology Research Laboratory.
At that time, antibiotics such as penicillin, streptomycin, and oxytetracycline had been applied to the clinic and became a "miracle drug" against infection. However, at the beginning of the founding of New China, China's antibiotic production was almost blank, some developed countries banned exports to China, and China must rely on itself, which is an urgent national task. Yin Hongzhang hopes that Shen Shanjiong will engage in antibiotic-related work.
Plant physiologists Luo Zongluo (center) and Yin Hongzhang (left), and microbial biochemist Shen Shanjiong (right)
In November 1952, the Antibiotic Symposium was held. After the meeting, Shen Shanjiong undertook the research work on the synthesis of chlortetracycline and streptomycin. In just two or three years, Shen Shanjiong, who had never been exposed to antibiotics, led the team to solve the key problem of chlortetracycline production.
In 1957, chlortetracycline was officially put into operation in the third pharmaceutical factory in Shanghai, and China became the fourth country capable of producing chlortetracycline.
Xu Changlin, director of Shanghai Film Studio, heard the story of Shen Shanjiong and Yin Hongzhang, was very interested, specially went to the laboratory to experience life, and used them as a prototype to produce the movie "Deep Friendship".
After chlortetracycline entered large-scale production, Shen Shanjiong gradually shifted the focus of his research to microbial biochemistry. Under his influence, the research team is looking for new things and new problems every day, always ready to meet new challenges.
In 1957 Shen Shanjiong was with students and staff (back row: left one, Wang Sunlun; second left, Chen Junbiao. Center Row: Left Third Jin Yifeng, Left Fifth, Shen Shanjiong)
In early 1960, Shen Shanjiong's student Wang Sunlun came to him and said that he had discovered a new phenomenon in his experiments, but was rejected by Shen Shanjiong. Through experimental data and literature reports, Wang Sunlun proved to Shen Shanjiong that what he found was a new pathway for hexosaccharid catabolism. Shen Shanjiong humbly accepted the facts and said to the students, "Your observation is right, I am wrong." Five years later, British scientists reported the same discovery.
Shen Shanjiong often told this story to the students, hoping that they would be able to think independently in scientific work and have the courage to admit mistakes and insist on the truth.
While studying Streptomyces, Shen and his team discovered nicotinamide nuclease acting on nicotinamide coenzymes and D-xylose isomerases that convert xylose into xylose. Unfortunately, they were unable to go deeper, and later The Japanese Company Ofetsu Industries applied this discovery to convert glucose into fructose, which was a commercial success.
In 1982, Japan's Mimatsu Industries sent someone (second person from right) to thank them for the discovery of glucose isomerase
Start from scratch and open up new horizons for nitrogen fixation
In 1973, Shen Shanjiong began to conduct genetic research on biological nitrogen fixation according to the arrangement of the institute. Twenty years have passed since the beginning of the fifties until he resumed his work on genetics, and during these twenty years genetics has developed very rapidly. After graduating with a Ph.D. in genetics, he was almost a layman, and everything had to start from scratch.
Inspired by the literature, from the first half of 1974, Shen Shanjiong led the team to study the fine structure and expression regulation of nitrogen-fixing genes using Bacillus pneumoniae knitsii as a material.
In December 1977, their research results were published in the journal Science in China, which was the first genetics paper published in China after the Cultural Revolution, marking the recovery of genetics in Chinese academia.
The 60-year-old is rejuvenated again. Along the first ambition, he not only opened up the field of molecular genetics and biological nitrogen fixation in China, but also achieved a number of new important results. Within a few years, his laboratory became internationally renowned for its research on biological nitrogen fixation.
Shen Shanjiong (left) poses with his classmate H. Temin (right), a classmate and Nobel laureate
In his later years, he wrote books and reflected on the scientific life
In 1997, Shen Shanjiong, an 80-year-old senior, had less energy than before and gradually faded out of the beloved scientific research stage, but he wanted to exert his residual heat, so he wrote some reminiscence articles to leave his experience and lessons behind.
In 2001, China Book Publishing House published his memoirs, My Scientific Career.
Shen Shanjiong has won many important awards such as the First Prize of Natural Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Outstanding Alumni Award of the California Institute of Technology, the Chen Jiageng Life Science Award, etc., but in his later years, he often said that he was not a scientist and did not achieve major achievements.
This year, Academician Shen Shanjiong has reached the age of 102 and has a long life, so let us jointly wish Shen Lao a long and healthy life.
Shen Shanjiong
(1917.4-)
geneticist
Microbial biochemist
Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
bibliography
1. Chlortetracycline, Cowshed, Biological Nitrogen Fixation, China Science and Technology Press
2. Shen Shanjiong, Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Jiusan Society
3. "Long Friendship" sings the feelings of intellectuals, "Popular Movie"
4. "Recalling Several Things I Interacted with Academician Shen Shanjiong", China Science Daily