Ho Leung Ho Lee (HLHL) Foundation awarded 52 Chinese scientists on Oct. 29th, 2014 in Beijing. Prof. LI Jinsong from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is one of the awardees of the year 2014.
The Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation was established 20 years ago in Mar 1994 in Hong Kong. The objective of the Foundation is to promote the national development and the advance towards modernization by annually rewarding outstanding scientific and technical achievers in China. The Foundation sets three annual prizes, i.e., Science and Technology Achievement Award, Science and Technology Progress Award, and Science and Technology Innovation Award. In the past two decades, the Foundation has become a widely respected and influential non-governmental science and technology award-granting fund.
A total of 14 Chinese scientists, including Prof. LI Jinsong, won the 2014 Science and Technology Innovation Award.
Dr. LI is currently a Principal Investigator in SIBCB. He received his B.S. degree at Jiangxi Agricultural University and his M.S. degree at Yangzhou University. He received his doctorate in Physiology from Institute of Zoology, CAS, Beijing in 2002. His postdoctoral work was done in the Rockefeller University, New York, from 2002 to 2007. Since 1997, Dr. LI’ s research has been focused on the mechanism and application of somatic reprogramming mediated by oocytes or Yamanaka factors. Dr. LI’s major achievements are as bellows:
1. Establishment of new reprogramming strategies. Dr. LI’s lab generated haploid embryonic stem cells (haESCs) from androgenetic embryos and demonstrated that haESCs could “fertilize” the mature oocytes, resulting in health semicloned (SC) mice (Yang et al. Cell, 2012, in cooperation with Dr. XU Guoliang’s lab at SIBCB). This technology provides a quick and reliable path to create genetically modified animals. Dr. LI’s lab also established a simple and high efficient reprogramming strategy, in which, somatic nuclei were directly injected into intact oocytes (Yang et al. Cell Res, 2010).
2. Elucidation of mechanisms involved in somatic reprogramming mediated by oocytes. Dr. LI’s lab provided the most direct evidence to demonstrate that defects in trophoblast cell lineage underlie the low success rate of cloned embryos (Lin et al. Cell Stem Cell, 2011). In cooperation with Dr. XU Guoliang’s lab, they demonstrated that Tet3, a maternal factor, was required for the conversion of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) into 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) in paternal pronucleus and pseudopronucleus formed from sperm and somatic nucleus, respectively (Gu et al. Nature, 2011).
3. Improvement of the quality of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Dr. LI’s demonstrated that nuclear transfer (NT) has better reprogramming ability that Yamanaka method (Jiang et al. J Mol Cell Biol, 2011, in cooperation with Dr. WU Jiarui’s lab in SIBCB). By screening for the factors that are critical for NT-mediated reprogramming and can decrease the DNA damage response signals during iPSC formation, Dr. LI’s lab determined that Zscan4, in combination with the Yamanaka factors, not only greatly enhanced the efficiency of iPSC generation but also improved the genomic stability of the cells, resulting in high-quality iPSCs (Jiang et al. Cell Res, 2013, in cooperation with Dr. LIU Lin’s lab in Nankai Uni).
4. Generation of cloned mice from different cells. During postdoctoral training, Dr. LI demonstrated the feasibility of different somatic cells for NT, including mature olfactory neurons (Li et al. Nature, 2004), skin cells (Li et al. PNAS, 2007) and frozen cells (Li et al. Biol Reprod, 2008).
5. Generation of the first cloned bovines in China. During Ph.D. training, Dr. LI generated the first cloned bovines in China (Chen D, Li J, et al. Chin Sci Bull, 2003).
Dr. LI has published more than 40 papers in prestigious journals, including Cell, Nature, Cell Stem Cell, PNAS and Cell Res. Two of his scientific achievements have been selected as one of the Top Ten Scientific Progress in China in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
A total of 10 Scientists from SIBCB have been awarded by HLHL Foundation Since 1996. They are: WANG Yinglai, WANG Debao, SHI Lvju, HONG Guofan, PEI Gang, LI Zaiping, XU Genjun, ZHANG Yonglian, WANG Enduo, and LI Jinsong.
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Awarded Ceremony of 2014 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation
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