Migratory birds migrating. Xinhua News Agency
Researchers demonstrate synthetic starch samples. Xinhua News Agency
Emerging brain science and technology. Xinhua News Agency
In 2021, what new mysteries of life sciences will be cracked by Chinese scientists? What secrets about COVID-19 have been revealed? What new medical breakthroughs are holding cancer treatment promising? On the 10th, the Life Science Society Consortium of the China Association for Science and Technology released the "Top Ten Progresses in Chinese Life Sciences" in 2021, and the achievements of synthetic starch, prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, and nasopharyngeal carcinoma treatment were selected. Compared with the previous selections, the originality of the selected results is more prominent, providing new ideas for the development of new technologies in life sciences, new breakthroughs in medicine and the development of bioeconomy, showing the social influence of life sciences and related technologies.
Food has revolutionized food production
The people take food as heaven. Eating well is the common pursuit of people, but the current grain production is still inseparable from "relying on the sky to eat", what changes can life science technology have, so as to provide new solutions for "food"? Among the ten major developments this time, two are related to "food".
Starch is the most important component of grain and an important industrial raw material. Can you skip farming and synthesize starch directly in the lab? The "synthetic synthesis from carbon dioxide to starch" is the first time in the world that the artificial synthesis of starch has been realized, which will have a transformative impact on the next generation of biomanufacturing and agricultural production. The study, carried out by the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Dalian Institute of Chemicals and other units, subverted the complex process of plant starch synthesis, surpassed the energy efficiency and speed of crops such as corn, and opened a window for the workshop manufacture of starch. The study has caused strong repercussions internationally and is considered a milestone breakthrough.
As one of the staple foods in China, rice has always received much attention for improving it and thus increasing yield. In 2021, Chinese scientists have made new breakthroughs in rice breeding. Li Jiayang's team from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed for the first time a new strategy for rapid de novo domestication of heterologous tetraploid wild rice, and successfully created a new material for different types of tetraploid rice such as improved granulation, mango, plant height, grain length, stem thickness, and growth period, breaking through all technical bottlenecks. This achievement opens up a new breeding direction, corresponding to the future food crisis provides a new feasible path, is expected to bring a subversive revolution to world food production.
The fight against the epidemic has brought hope to the prevention and treatment of new crown pneumonia
Two studies on the fight against the epidemic, "Mechanism of natural immunity and antiviral drugs of the escape host of the new coronavirus" and "Cross-species identification and molecular mechanism of the coronavirus" are of great significance to the complex anti-epidemic situation in the international community today.
At present, the new crown virus pneumonia epidemic has lasted for two years, and the emerging mutant strains have put forward an urgent need for the development of broad-spectrum drugs. The "transcriptional replication complex" is composed of viral replication enzymes, which is responsible for the whole process of viral transcriptional replication, which is highly conserved in each mutant strain and is the core target for the development of broad-spectrum drugs. The research group of Academician Rao Zihe and Professor Lou Zhiyong of Tsinghua University has discovered and reconstructed the complete composition of the transcriptional replication machine of the new coronavirus for the first time in the world, providing a new target for the development of new and safe broad-spectrum antiviral drugs and providing a key scientific basis for optimizing antiviral drugs against polymerase.
In the past 20 years, humanity has suffered three major outbreaks caused by the coronavirus. Most human-infecting coronaviruses originate from animals, and the spread of viruses from person to person is often lagging behind, and the threshold of disease prevention and control needs to be moved forward in "time". Therefore, among the top ten progress selected this time, another research on the fight against the epidemic focuses on preventing the outbreak caused by the new coronavirus.
The study, conducted by the team of Academician Gao Fu of the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, established methods for efficiently assessing the cross-species recognition ability of coronaviruses, using these methods to assess the potential risk of cross-species transmission of bat-derived coronaviruses and pangolin-derived coronaviruses, and found that the above three coronaviruses have potential risks of cross-species transmission, prompting us to continue to monitor animal-derived coronaviruses.
Puzzle How ancient creatures evolved and why birds migrated didn't get lost
How did fish in ancient times evolve to land? Why don't birds on Earth get lost when they migrate long distances? In 2021, Chinese scientists are one step closer to unlocking the mysteries of more lives.
Wang Wen and Wang Kun of the School of Ecology and Environment of Northwestern Polytechnical University, together with He Shunping of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhang Guojie of the Kunming Institute of Zoology and other teams, found that the ancestors of the teleost fish have evolved the relevant genetic basis for adapting to the land, and have been further strengthened in the fin fish, and finally evolved into tetrapods and successfully landed on land. This provides key insights and data to decipher the genetic innovation mechanisms of how vertebrates evolved from aquatic to terrestrial events more than 400 million years ago.
The formation process, maintenance mechanism and future trend of bird migration routes under climate change, as well as the genetic basis of migration strategies, have always been hot spots and difficulties in the academic community. Zhan Xiangjiang's team at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences spent 12 years integrating years of satellite tracking data and population genomic information to establish a continental-scale Arctic peregrine falcon migration research system. It not only elucidates the driving role of climate change in the formation, maintenance and future trends of bird migration routes, but also reveals that long-term memory may be an important basis for long-distance migration of birds. The study comprehensively combines new research methods such as remote sensing satellite tracking, genomics, and neurobiology, and demonstrates the key role of interdisciplinary and innovative research in answering major scientific questions.
Anti-cancer Nasopharyngeal cancer has a new treatment
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a tumor with "Chinese characteristics", accounting for half of the world's new cases every year. The small residual tumors of the whole body after radiotherapy are the root cause of their treatment failure, and due to the poor physical condition of patients after radiotherapy, it is difficult to tolerate the previous high-intensity traditional chemotherapy (the completion rate is only about 40% to 50%), which has become a bottleneck restricting the improvement of efficacy.
Life science research can provide new treatments for the fight against cancer. The research team of Ma Jun of the Cancer Prevention and Control Center of Sun Yat-sen University proposed a low-dose, long-term oral cytotoxic drug capecitabine cycle chemotherapy model. This treatment method can continuously inhibit tumors through mechanisms such as anti-angiogenesis and killing tumor stem cells, while improving the body's tolerance. Clinical studies have found that the use of this method after radiotherapy significantly reduces the risk of failure by 45%, and the incidence of serious toxic side effects is reduced by 3/5, and the completion rate is 74%. At the same time, this method is convenient and accessible, and it is easy to promote to the grassroots. As a result, the study broke the bottleneck of the efficacy of traditional chemotherapy and established a new standard for the international treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which is efficient and low toxicity, and simple and easy to implement.
Frontier Gene regulation, nanoscale microscopy, brain science related achievements were selected
There are also three top ten achievements, all focusing on the core and cutting-edge issues of international life science research.
The research results of Xu Yanhui's team at Fudan University have revealed why transcription occurs on the promoters of almost all genes, subverting the traditional understanding of promoter recognition and assembly of transcription initiation complexes, which is of great significance for understanding gene expression regulation and related physiological and pathological processes.
The technical research team composed of academician Xu Tao and Ji Wei's research group of the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been focusing on the research of breakthrough optical microscopy resolution, and their research results can analyze the subcellular structure of the nanoscale, providing a powerful tool for life science research. The study shows that optical microscopy has entered the era of nano resolution, And Chinese scientists have multidisciplinary interdisciplinary technological innovation capabilities in this field, and the new super-resolution imaging equipment with independent intellectual property rights developed is in the leading position in the world.
The team of Peng Hanchuan, Gu Zhongze and Xie Wei of the Institute of Brain Science and Intelligent Technology of Southeast University has established the world's first complete whole-brain single-neuron resolution big data and informatics platform and applied it to whole mouse brain research, and their research will continue to play an important role in brain cell typing and function, brain connection loop, whole brain large-scale simulation, brain-like computing, and new artificial intelligence algorithms and systems based on biological brains.
It is understood that since the Chinese Association for Science and Technology Life Science Society Consortium has carried out the selection since 2015, the annual selection has been selected by senior experts in the fields of life science, biotechnology and clinical medicine, and reviewed by the presidium of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology Life Science Society Consortium, which has promoted China's life science research and technological innovation, and let more people understand the major scientific and technological achievements in the field of life science in China.
(Beijing, January 10, 2019- Zhan Yuan, reporter of this newspaper)
Source: Guangming Daily