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

Cross-species recognition and molecular mechanisms of coronaviruses. In the last 20 years, humanity has suffered three major outbreaks caused by coronaviruses. Most coronavirus-infecting humans originate from animals, and we have found that the transmission of viruses from person to person is often delayed, and the threshold of disease prevention and control needs to move forward in "time". A team of Academician Gao Fu of the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences has established efficient methods to evaluate the cross-species recognition ability of coronaviruses, and used these methods to assess the potential risk of cross-species transmission of bat-derived coronaviruses RaTG13 and pangolin-derived coronaviruses GD/1/2019 and GX/P2V/2017. The molecular mechanism of cross-species recognition was also clarified. The study found that the above three coronaviruses have the potential risk of cross-species transmission, suggesting that we should continue to monitor animal-derived coronaviruses to prevent new coronaviruses from causing outbreaks, and at the same time provide a molecular basis for understanding virus evolution. The results have been published in the journal Cell (2021, 184(13):3438-3451.e10) and the Journal of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO J, 2021, 41(1):e109962).

Unraveling the mystery of long-distance bird migration. Bird migration is one of the most watched natural wonders. The formation process, maintenance mechanism and future trend of migration routes under climate change, as well as the genetic basis of migration strategies, have been the focus and difficulty of academic research. A team from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Zhan Xiangjiang, spent 12 years integrating years of satellite tracking data and population genomic information to establish a continent-scale migration research system for Arctic peregrinus Falco peregrinus. The researchers elucidated the role of climate change in the formation, maintenance and future trends of bird migration routes, and found that a gene associated with memory ability, ADCY8, was positively selected in populations of peregrine falcons that migrated over longer distances, suggesting that long-term memory may be an important basis for long-distance migration in birds. The study fully integrates new research methods such as remote sensing satellite tracking, genomics, and neurobiology, demonstrating the key role of interdisciplinary innovative research in answering major scientific questions. The work was published as a cover article in the journal Nature (2021,591 (7849):259-264) and was named one of 12 annual reviews by Nature Ecological Evolution.

Interference single molecule positioning microscope. The physiological processes of cells are carried out by nanoscale biomolecules, so a deeper understanding of life activities requires imaging techniques with nanoresolution. The technical research team composed of Academician Xu Tao Group and Ji Wei Group of Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been focusing on the research of breaking through the resolution of optical microscopic imaging. The pre-developed ROSE microscope has improved the lateral (X-Y) resolution to the nanometer level (Nature Methods, 2019). Based on the innovative principle of interference localization, ROSE-Z microscope was developed, which further broke through the axial (Z) resolution and could resolve the nanoscale subcellular structure, providing a powerful tool for life science research. The research shows that the optical microscope has entered the era of nanometer resolution, and Chinese scientists have the ability of interdisciplinary technological innovation in this field, and the new super-resolution imaging equipment with independent intellectual property rights is in the leading position in the world. The results are published in the journal Nature Methods (2021, 18:369-373).

Whole brain single neuron diversity research and informatics big data platform. Single-neuron precision whole-brain mapping is crucial to understanding the brain. The team of Peng Hanchuan, Gu Zhongze and Xie Wei from the Institute of Brain Science and Intelligent Technology of Southeast University established the world's first complete whole brain single neuron resolution big data and informatics platform and applied it to the whole mouse brain research, and carried out high-throughput neuron reconstruction, whole brain mapping and intelligent data mining for the whole brain three-dimensional image data of neurons. Based on this platform, we produced the largest single cell neuron morphological dataset in the world, revealing for the first time the long-term projection rule and the diversity of neuron morphological subclasses on the basis of molecular level. It continues to play an important role in the study of brain cell classification and function, brain connectivity circuits, whole-brain large-scale simulation, brain-like computing, and new artificial intelligence algorithms and systems based on biological brains. This achievement realizes the first PB-level hyperscale brain big data platform combined with hardware and software and the first complete single cell morphology data production pipeline, which quantitatively proves that complete single cell anatomy analysis is crucial for the identification of nerve cell types. The main research results were published in Nature.