A number of achievements of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were selected as the top ten Advances in China's Life Sciences in 2021

On January 10, the Consortium of Life Science Societies of the China Association for Science and Technology announced the selection results of the "Top Ten Advances in China's Life Sciences" in 2021, including eight knowledge innovation categories and two technological innovation projects. A number of achievements completed or jointly completed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences were selected, including "Artificial synthesis from carbon dioxide to starch", "Genetic innovation mechanism of vertebrate evolution from aquatic to terrestrial", "rapid de novo domestication of allotetraploid wild rice", "cross-species recognition and molecular mechanism of coronavirus", "resistance to Unearth the mystery of long-distance bird migration", "interference single molecule localization microscopy" and so on.

In the selection of this year's "Top Ten Progress in China's Life Sciences", the number of projects recommended by the consortium member societies has increased significantly compared with previous years, the competition is fierce, the selection is becoming more perfect, and the social influence continues to expand. More significantly, the selected projects have the characteristics of outstanding originality and great social significance. Among them, the knowledge innovation project "Artificial Synthesis from Carbon dioxide to starch" has achieved the first artificial synthesis of carbon dioxide to starch in the world, which is expected to bring transformative impact in the next generation of biological manufacturing and agricultural production. The knowledge innovation projects "Research on the mechanism of host natural immunity of Novel coronavirus escape and antiviral drugs" and "cross-species identification and molecular mechanism of coronavirus" are of great significance to the complex anti-epidemic situation in the international community today. The technical innovation project "Interferometric single molecule localization microscope" has laid a foundation for opening up a new interdisciplinary research field.

Since 2015, the Association of Life Science Societies of China Association for Science and Technology has carried out the annual selection of "Top Ten Progress in China's Life Sciences", aiming to promote life science research and technological innovation, and fully demonstrate and publicize major scientific and technological achievements in the field of life sciences in China.

Introduction to the Top 10 Advances in China's Life Sciences in 2021:

From carbon dioxide to starch synthesis. Starch is the most important component of grain and also an important industrial raw material. The Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and other units, extracted the chemical essence of natural photosynthesis, designed and created an unnatural pathway from carbon dioxide to starch synthesis from the ground up, and solved scientific problems such as ab initio calculation of pathway metabolic flow, design and assembly of key enzyme elements, and precise regulation of biochemical pathways. The 11-step reaction coupled with biocatalysis and chemical catalysis overturns the complex biochemical process of natural photosynthesis to fix carbon dioxide to synthesize starch, and realizes the artificial total synthesis of carbon dioxide to starch for the first time in the world, with energy efficiency and rate exceeding corn and other crops, breaking through the limitations of natural photosynthesis, and opening a window for the workshop manufacturing of starch. It also provides a new idea for the synthesis of complex molecules from carbon dioxide. It has been strongly echoed internationally and is considered a landmark breakthrough that will have a transformative impact in the next generation of bio-manufacturing and agricultural production. The results are in the journal Science (2021,373 (6562):1523-1527).

Genetic innovation mechanism of vertebrate evolution from aquatic to terrestrial. The transition from aquatic to terrestrial vertebrates more than 400 million years ago was a major event in the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates, including humans, but little has been known about the genetic innovation mechanism of this major event for a long time. The team of Wang Wen and Wang Kun from the School of Ecology and Environment of Northwestern Polytechnical University, in cooperation with He Shunping from the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhang Guojie from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, found that the ancestors of bony fish had evolved a preliminary genetic basis related to terrestrial adaptability, which was further strengthened in the meal-finned fish represented by lungfish, and finally perfected and successfully landed on land. According to Science, the results reveal "hidden genetic secrets of aquatic to terrestrial evolution in living fish". Professor Per Alhberg, a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, wrote that the results overcome the challenges of fossil research to study soft tissue organs and physiological problems, Neil Shubin, a member of the American Academy of Sciences and an internationally renowned vertebrate landing research expert, wrote that the results "provide key cognitive and long-expected data" for understanding the study of vertebrates from aquatic to terrestrial life. Two research papers on this result were published as cover stories in the journal Cell, 2021,184 (5):1362-1376; 1377-1391).