On May 31st, the list of awardees for 2024 Ray Wu Prize was announced, with 11 doctoral students from institutions and universities including Peking University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Tongji University, Beijing Institute of Life Sciences, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences), ShanghaiTech University, CAS Center of Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Wuhan University, Tsinghua University receiving this prestigious award. Among them, Jing Zhengyu, a doctoral student from the School of Life Science and Technology at ShanghaiTech University, and Lin Jialing, a doctoral student jointly trained by ShanghaiTech University and the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, made the list.
Ray Wu, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a biochemist, is one of the pioneers of DNA sequencing technology and has made significant contributions to the development of life sciences research in China. Ray Wu Prize was established in 2008 and is considered one of the highest awards for doctoral students in the Chinese life sciences field. Since its first award in 2009, the scholarship aims to encourage doctoral students in the field of life sciences to become future academic leaders, while commemorating Professor Ray Wu’s outstanding contributions to the cultivation of China’s next generation of exceptional talents in the field of life sciences. The scholarship has been awarded to more than one hundred and fifty individuals.
Jing Zhengyu, a doctoral student from the School of Life Science and Technology, focuses his research on addressing the unknown functions of the majority of human genes two decades after the completion of the Human Genome Project. The challenge is largely due to the lack of effective technologies for exploration. Since the discovery of CRISPR/Cas technology, its high efficiency and specificity in editing have made it a key tool for decoding gene functions. In particular, CRISPR-mediated genetic screening enables rapid, high-throughput decoding of gene functions. However, existing CRISPR genetic screening techniques have been limited to in vitro cell lines and a few in vivo cell types due to difficulties in delivering gRNA libraries. To overcome this limitation and extend CRISPR genetic screening to all in vivo cell types, Jing Zhengyu and his team, under the guidance of Professor Chi Tian, innovatively combined the CRISPR/Cas system with the Cre/LoxP system to develop a new method called iMAP (inducible mosaic animal for perturbation). By using transgenic technology to integrate an array containing all gRNAs into the mouse genome, each cell can express and only express one gRNA. At present, iMAP technology allows for in situ genetic screening of at least 100 genes in all cells of the same mouse, and can quickly and economically obtain a large number of single gene knockout mice through simple breeding strategies. In 2022, Jing Zhengyu, as a co-first author, published the related research findings in the journal CELL.
Lin Jialing, a doctoral student jointly trained by ShanghaiTech University and the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, is engaged in research in plant secondary metabolism and cotton biology under the guidance of Academician Chen Xiaoya. She focuses on the biosynthesis and regulatory mechanisms of cotton terpenoid secondary metabolites and the role of these natural products in the interactions between plants and their complex environments. Her research on terpenoid metabolites, which are sources of pharmaceuticals, nutrients, and some industrial products, is crucial. Due to the limited natural resources and low content of natural products in plants, it is imperative to develop new biotechnological platforms, such as metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, to produce and supply valuable natural products. Lin Jialing’s research focuses on cotton terpenoid metabolites, and in March 2023, her first paper as an independent first author was published in the prestigious journal Nature Plants. In October 2023, her second paper as first author was published in another leading journal in the field, Molecular Plant. Recently, her paper as a co-first author has been officially accepted by Advanced Science.