Two days ago, in the new list of academicians released by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), the name of structural biologist Yan Ning was impressively listed. For this matter, Yan Ning also posted the election message on her personal social account, and humorously said that she "did not have the strength to be happy."
At this time, the 43-year-old Yan Ning, because she has achieved a number of research results in structural biology, and has also published many heavyweight papers in the most influential international journals such as Science and Cell, she is not only a senior scientist in biology, but also invited by Princeton University to become a tenured chair professor in the Department of Molecular Biology.
In fact, as early as when Yan Ning obtained a postdoctoral degree, she had refused the favorable conditions offered by foreign countries, resolutely returned to China, and became the youngest professor and doctoral supervisor of Tsinghua University. However, no one expected that 10 years later, she would leave the United States again. Her behavior once attracted many people's discussion and accusations, and some people even said that she was not rated as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and left in a negative mood. So, what exactly made Yan Ning choose to leave the United States?
Yan Ning was born in 1977 in The Village of Boping in Zhangqiu, Shandong Province, to parents who were both workers at the Shandong Automobile Manufacturing Plant. Because her parents were busy at work and could not take care of her, they kept her in foster care at her grandmother's house. According to Yan Ning's cousin, Yan Ning was very well-behaved and quiet when she was a child. She likes to read calligraphy and painting, and after reading a comic strip, she can fully recount the plot of the book. Therefore, everyone thinks that she has a good memory and is a child prodigy.
When Yan Ning was 6 years old, because her parents were transferred to Beijing, and she also reached the age of school, she was taken to her parents and attended primary school in Beijing.
Whether it is primary school or junior high school, Yan Ning's results are among the best. Still, her mother clung to her studies. During most holidays, her classmates go out to play, but she can only stay at home and continue to study.
When she was in high school, Yan Ning became fascinated by literature. She not only liked Tang poetry and Song Ci, but also read a lot of prose novels, and Yan Ning's goal at that time was to enter the Chinese Department of Peking University. However, when dividing subjects, her teacher thought that it was a waste of talent for her to study liberal arts first in her homework, so she suggested that she switch to science.
Under the persuasion of her parents and teachers, Yan Ning finally applied for the science department. The teacher may not have known at that time that his little advice, although obliterating a literary youth, had given the country an additional great scientist.
In 1996, Yan Ning was admitted to Tsinghua University with excellent results. At this time, her parents hoped that she would study medicine. In the eyes of parents, it is also a good profession for girls to become a doctor in the future. However, Yan Ning is a very assertive person, she once heard an old scientist say that "the 21st century is the era of life sciences", which has always left a deep impression on her. And she didn't want her to go to college for employment, so she chose the biology department, which was not promising at the time.
However, after entering Tsinghua University, Although Yan Ning still worked hard, she found that there were many school bullies there. And she has always had excellent grades, and in that group of school bullies, she has become a passerby. This invisibly put a lot of pressure on her, so that although she worked hard for a long time, the effect was not ideal.
Once, Yan Ning told her mother that the classmates in the school were too strong, what if she did not get good grades and was dissuaded? My mother comforted her and said, it's all right, I would rather you have a better time than to persuade you to quit. Only then did her mother tell her that the reason why she was very strict before college was that she was afraid of going out and playing crazy. Now that she's in college and grown up, she should know that she's responsible for herself.
The mother's push made Yan Ning understand that her mother did not only look at her studies, which somewhat eased Yan Ning's psychological pressure. Fortunately, at the end of the semester, her exams, although not particularly high, were not as bad as she thought. This gave Yan Ning confidence, and after that, she learned more and more easily, and also participated in many group activities in the school, such as painting, dancing, etc., she had a good performance.
The people who really made Yan Ning like biology were structural biologists Rao Zihe and Professor. At that time, Yan Ning was already in her junior year, and because she was very attentive, Rao Zihe and the professor were very optimistic about her, so they selected her to enter his laboratory. It was also at that time that Yan Ning discovered the joy of doing experiments, and she gradually quit the society she had joined, and stuck in the laboratory all day long, busy with various experiments.
When I was about to graduate, my classmates were busy submitting resumes, hoping to find a job with a high salary. Yan Ning did not seem to care about employment at all, Yan Ning had also submitted resumes like her classmates, during which time she received replies from many companies, including high-paying invitations from large international companies such as Novo Nordisk China Pharmaceutical Company.
At this time, Shi Yigong, a Chinese professor at Princeton University in the United States, came to Tsinghua University to give a speech and encouraged college students who are about to graduate to have a longer-term vision, that is, to study abroad, and then come back to serve the country after they have achieved success.
Shi was an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, and he was also the examiner for asian international students.
Yan Ning wrote a self-recommendation letter to Shi Yigong, in which he wrote: "I feel that I am excellent in all aspects, and I hope to spend my time in a more valuable place." But applying to go abroad is a waste of time and money, and if Princeton admits me, I won't have to spend any more energy applying to other schools..."
Shi Yigong was impressed by Yan Ning's self-confidence, so he had returned to the United States and personally interviewed Yan Ning by phone. By the time Yan Ning graduated, Princeton's acceptance letter had also crossed the ocean and came to her hands.
At Princeton University, Yan Ning studied under Shi Yigong. Under his guidance, he began to study the field of molecular regulatory mechanisms that entered tumorigenesis of apoptosis. However, it takes a lot of effort to get results, Yan Ning only sleeps for more than 5 hours a day, and the rest of the time is almost soaked in the laboratory. But in the first 3 years, no progress has been made. She was a little impatient to see that other people's papers had been published in important journals, but she was never a person who gave up lightly, so she continued to sleep and eat her research. Fortunately, all the efforts were finally fruitful, Yan Ning's experiment was successful, and her relevant papers were published in journals such as Science. In her fourth year, she successfully obtained her doctorate and won the "Young Scientist Award" in North America.
What really made Yan Ning famous was when she was doing postdoctoral research. At that time, no one had yet made a breakthrough in the study of membrane proteins related to important diseases. However, if it is possible to resolve the high-resolution crystals of a disease-related membrane protein, it can be developed according to its basis to develop a drug that inhibits it. In that case, there will be great progress in the fight against cancer. Yan Ning conducted repeated experiments in the laboratory, and after many failures and improvements, she successfully analyzed the world's first membrane protein structure. Her success caused a big splash internationally, and she became one of the most promising young scientists in biology to win the Nobel Prize in Biology.
In 2007, Yan Ning, who had achieved brilliant results in biology, refused the favorable conditions given by foreign countries and could not wait to return to his alma mater. She hopes that she can use her abilities to continue scientific research at Tsinghua University. At the same time, she is also eager to cultivate more talents who are conducive to the development of national science and technology. In the 10 years of teaching, Yan Ning has always done the same.
At that time, Yan Ning was the youngest professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University. However, for Yan Ning, her return means that everything has to start from scratch. For example, to build a laboratory, Yan Ning has to realize it step by step, make experimental tables, buy experimental instruments... There was nothing that didn't bother her.
After building the laboratory, Yan Ning also taught the students how to operate the instrument and how to do experiments. These things once made her impatient personality suffer. But she watched the students work hard, so she didn't complain. She patiently went step by step to teach, and eventually everything gradually got on track, which made her very happy and made her very confident.
Sure enough, while teaching at Tsinghua University, Yan Ning not only brought out a group of outstanding students, but she also and her team resolved the three-dimensional crystals of the glucose transporter (GLUT1 for short). You know, in proteins, because membrane proteins have always been present on the cell membrane, and if you separate it, it is easy to degenerate. Therefore, it is almost impossible to analyze its structure. However, GLUT1 is found in a large number of human cells, and it plays a very important role in maintaining the stability of blood glucose concentrations and blood supply to the brain. Therefore, Yan Ning's research results are not only another major discovery in the world biological community, but also because of this research, we can understand the motion mechanism of GLUT1, so as to find the pathogenic principle of related diseases according to the data.
In addition, Yan Ning also contributed to the sodium ion channel, and used the latest cryo-EM technology to analyze the high-resolution structure of the high-throughput calcium channel RyR1.
In addition, Yan Ning has published dozens of papers in important international journals, which has also made her twice rated as "Top Ten Progress of the Year" by Science.
In 2016, Yan Ning was named "China Science Star" for his contributions to protein structure. The following year, she was selected as the "Scientific Person of the Year 2017 Influencing China" and was nominated for the "Influencing The World Chinese Award".
For her achievements, Yan Ning once said in an interview with reporters that if she were abroad with the same starting point and the same conditions, it would be impossible to have such a high yield.
However, unexpectedly, in 2017, Yan Ning left Tsinghua University and accepted an invitation from Princeton University to become a tenured chair professor in the biology department of the university.
For Yan Ning's departure, many people expressed regret. Many people also say that the motherland spent a lot of effort to cultivate her, but as a result, she betrayed the motherland. Others say that because she was nominated as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017, she was not selected, which led to her departure. In short, everyone was very dissatisfied with her departure and thought that she had no patriotic heart.
However, in the face of everyone's misinterpretation and criticism, Yan Ning did not give an answer immediately. While teaching at Princeton, she remained obsessed with the subjects she studied and achieved enviable results. Not only was he awarded the Weizmann Women and Scientific Achievement Award, but he was also awarded a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Today, Yan Ning is once again elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a Chinese. This, of course, is an affirmation of her contribution to scientific research, and it also proves once again that Chinese scientists have a stronger ability and influence internationally.
It was only then that Yan Ning explained her departure from Tsinghua University. She said she was afraid that if she stayed in an environment for a long time, she would be stuck in the air without knowing it. So she wants to change a new environment, give herself a little new pressure, to stimulate her own inspiration, so that it can play a better role in scientific research.
In addition, Yan Ning also said that she hopes that through her efforts, Princeton University and foreign first-class universities can be promoted to increase exchanges and cooperation opportunities with Tsinghua University. In this way, some good conditions can be added to the cultivation of talents.
Obviously, in Yan Ning's heart, he not only loves the motherland, but also always thinks of repaying his alma mater. Isn't such a scientist worthy of praise?