"Now I can have a baby with confidence!" | "Post-80s" Female Scientists Happiness Duo", "Double Happiness", "Local Young Scientists" Are No Less" "The People's Needs Are the Direction"

Author | Feng Lifei Ji Haili

The child finally fell into a deep sleep in his arms, revealing a chubby little face, which made people like and pity. The 3-month-old is the worst period of flatulence and must sleep peacefully in the arms of his mother.

The two paper review comments of the research group have just returned, and as the first author of the article, Cui Yinglu must carefully revise the article. So there is a scene where she wraps her back scarf and embraces the child to write a review reply.

As a new mother and a female researcher, this is just an ordinary night for Cui Yinglu to spend with her children and scientific research. Such a scenario may make you think that women are very bitter in doing scientific research. But for Cui Yinglu, this is a "particularly happy" moment.

Cui Yinglu (center) and colleagues in the laboratory courtesy of the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

In 2017, 28-year-old Cui Yinglu joined the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and became a member of the team of researcher Wu Bian.

At that time, the team leader Wu Bian had just returned from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for one year, and this new team had many wild ideas. Nowadays, after several years of construction, their ideas have gradually landed, and their research on artificial design of proteins and driving biomanufacturing has been highly praised by peers at home and abroad.

As an assistant researcher and a competent member of the team, Cui Yinglu rejoiced in the harvest of scientific research, but also ushered in another good news: a small life has quietly arrived.

At that time, the two projects of the research team, "computer protein redesign to achieve mild condition microplastic biodegradation" and "mechanism analysis and computational remodeling of microbial hydroamine enzymes", just completed the main experimental work. As the little life in her belly grows up day by day, the article written by Cui Yinglu and her peers based on the results of the study is also nearing the end.

The day before the due date, Cui Yinglu handed the article to Wu Bian and said, "Now I can rest assured that I can have a baby." ”

Now, Cui Yinglu has returned to work after maternity leave for more than half a year. While breastfeeding, while working, mothers who have experienced this period can experience the hardships of life, but Cui Yinglu is still optimistic and not impatient.

"The satisfaction of breaking through the work, coupled with the happiness of being with your baby every day, double happiness is not just a simple '1 + 1 = 2'." Cui Yinglu said in an interview with China Science News, "Efficient work and high-quality companionship have made me gradually realize that being a mother is also a process of continuous self-improvement. Not only for the dream of scientific research, but also to set a good example for the baby. ”

If you add two cover articles published in the Journal of Catalysis and Nature-Catalysis of the American Chemical Society at the beginning of this year, Cui Yinglu has now appeared on the cover of 5 papers in world-class academic journals as the first author. This year, she also won the Young Outstanding Paper Award of the Chinese Society of Biological Engineering and the Excellent Report Award of the 4th Biochemical Young Scholars Forum.

"Cui Yinglu is a young scholar who has grown up in China, but her research is at the forefront of the world. Compared with young people of the same age in the world, her current achievements are not inferior, which is inseparable from her positive attitude and hard work in her usual work. "She has a good work-life balance, which is very important for young female scientists." ”

Talking about the achievements she has achieved, Cui Yinglu feels that she is very lucky to have met a team that is "harmonious but different" and "relaxed". "Teacher Wu Bian has a very unique set of concepts in the construction of team culture, our team is very strong in interdisciplinarity, some do artificial intelligence, some do industrial research and development, and everyone together produces different ideas through the collision of ideas." "Similarly, everyone, whether teachers or students, is free to come up with their own scientific ideas, and we encourage everyone to use Friday afternoons to validate a scientific idea, and such a relaxed atmosphere is also prone to scientific inspiration," he said. ”

In such a laboratory culture atmosphere, Cui Yinglu said that each member will not be bound by the requirements of the indicator, but will cooperate sincerely with higher passion to achieve common goals.

Based on this, the research team completed the computational design of the world's first industrial-grade engineered strain in 2018, taking the lead in making a breakthrough in the industrialization of artificial intelligence-driven biomanufacturing. They not only designed the optimal synthesis pathway for unnatural amino acids with special biological activity such as β-amino acids, but also designed a series of β-amino acid synthases, and based on this, they built engineered strains that can efficiently synthesize β-amino acids.

The research team actively promoted the landing and transformation of the results. Through cooperation with enterprises, the two sides are expected to significantly reduce production costs in the production process of anti-cancer and AIDS treatment drugs such as paclitaxel, durutvir and Malaviro. Huaheng Biologics, a cooperative enterprise, completed the listing review of the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2020.

Last year, the research group segmented the active center hydrogen bond network of β-amino acid synthase, obtained a series of artificial amino acid synthases that can catalyze cross-substrates, and took the lead in realizing a breakthrough innovation in the coupling design of two substrates in the field of microbial enzymology. Recently, they have realized the enzymatic synthesis of complete proteins, which further provides tools for the construction of non-natural functional proteins, and also provides technical support for expanding human design and synthesis of biological macromolecular elements.

Cui Yinglu has always regarded Academician Zhang Shuzheng as a role model in scientific research.

Zhang Shuzheng is the first female biochemist in China and one of the founders of glycobiology. Today, many stories about her are still circulating among scientists at the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In the 1950s, Zhang Shuzheng and his colleagues screened out a batch of excellent aspergillus niger with strong glycase activity, and they wanted to use the new technology paper electrophoresis at that time to isolate and determine their activity, but the Chinese Bacteriological Protection Association at that time did not have an electrophoresis instrument and could not order from abroad, so they tried to make one by themselves. Its power supply was initially the battery on the car, and later the transformer on the transmitter would be converted from AC to direct current, and finally innovative results were made.

"The working conditions of the older generation of scientists are extremely difficult, but their deep dream of serving the country has always inspired us." She said, "Today we should carry forward the scientific research spirit of the older generation of scientists, establish the idea of innovating science and technology, serving the country and benefiting the people, and integrate the ideal of life into the struggle to realize the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." ”

"The people's needs are the direction", the words of Academician Fang Xinfang, a pioneer of industrial microorganisms, have inspired the older generation of scientists to rely on themselves and innovate under difficult conditions. Today, this sentence still inspires a new generation of young scientists such as Cui Yinglu.

Now, under the leadership of Wu Bian, the research team is focusing on a new goal: using cutting-edge science such as synthetic biology to break through scientific research difficulties and technical bottlenecks such as plastic degradation.

"I hope that through our efforts, we can develop effective means and tools to truly solve major problems facing human development, and achieve a breakthrough in the concept from '0 to 1' and the application transformation from '1 to 100' as soon as possible." This is the dream of Cui Yinglu and many young scientists.