The "Top Ten Advances in China's Life Sciences" in 2021 was announced

On January 10, the Life Science Society of the China Association for Science and Technology jointly announced to the society the results of the "Top Ten Progress in China's Life Sciences" in 2021.

Based on the principle of "fairness, fairness and openness", the selection of "Top Ten Progress in China's Life Sciences" in 2021 will continue the way of classifying and evaluating project achievements by knowledge innovation and technological innovation, organizing member societies to recommend them, and selecting them by senior experts in the fields of life science, biotechnology and clinical medicine. After review by the Presidium of the Association of Life Sciences of the China Association for Science and Technology, the results of 8 knowledge innovation and 2 technology innovation projects were finally determined as the "Top Ten Progress in China's Life Sciences" in 2021.

The selected projects in this year's "Top Ten Advances in Life Sciences in China" have the characteristics of outstanding originality and great social significance. The specific results are as follows (in no particular order).

1. Artificial synthesis from carbon dioxide to starch

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 Compounds 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).

2. 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 collaboration 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 live 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).

Major genetic innovations in aquatic to terrestrial evolution of vertebrates

3. Mechanism of the novel coronavirus escaping host natural immunity and antiviral drugs

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia has lasted for two years, and the continuous emergence of mutant strains poses an urgent need for the development of broad-spectrum drugs. The "transcriptional replication complex" consists of viral replicase, which is responsible for the whole process of viral transcription and replication. It is highly conserved in each mutant strain and is the core target of developing 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 novel coronavirus transcription and replication machine for the first time in the world. On this basis, the key enzyme molecules of viral mRNA "cap" maturation were identified for the first time, which answered the unresolved questions in coronavirus research for nearly 30 years. Moreover, the molecule is highly conserved in various mutant strains and has no homologues in human beings, providing a new target for the development of novel and safe broad-spectrum antiviral drugs. At the same time, they also found for the first time that the virus "removes" the right base and antiviral drugs in a "trans-traceback" way, clarifying the molecular mechanism of the adverse effect of drugs such as Redesivir, and providing a key scientific basis for optimizing antiviral drugs targeting polymerase.