Features China Introduction

Features China Introduction Tom Blundell (President, the Biochemical Society) This issue of The Biochemist is focused on biochemistry in China. It is timely because it reflects the history of biochemical research collaboration between Chinese and UK scientists, not only by looking back over the last century, but also by reviewing some of the strengths of biochemical research in China in 2011. Downloaded from http://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article-pdf/33/5/4/3914/bio033050004.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 It has been a busy year for the Biochemical Society, which both in the UK and China. But there were interactions is celebrating its first century. It will do so at the Centenary before Needham became involved. In this issue, Randy Celebration event at the Royal Society in London in Poon draws our attention to one of these, the first paper December, but it has already done so very impressively in from China published in a journal of the Biochemical Shanghai in May with a Joint Sino–UK Protein Symposium. Society. In 1926 Ernest Tso of the Peking Union Medical There we heard about truly momentous contributions College described vitamins in preserved duck eggs, arising from interactions of influential scientists from maintaining they are “as much used on the table as is both China and UK during the last century. Just before cheese in Western countries”. the Symposium, also in May 2011, the Biochemical Journal We should also celebrate Wang Ying-Lai, who did his opened its China office in Beijing with a mini-symposium. PhD in Cambridge between 1938 and 1941. He returned Both events are described in this issue by Frances van to China in 1945 and rose to be Director of Shanghai Klaveren and colleagues. Institute of Biochemistry. He was one of the founders of Joseph Needham, the Cambridge biochemist and biochemistry in China. Together with Zou Chenglu, who historian of science in China, is often acknowledged as the did his PhD in Biochemistry in Cambridge a decade later, person who first encouraged interactions between UK and and was influenced by Fred Sanger there, he initiated China. He spent many years in China during the Second a project to synthesize insulin. I am told they were World War and has been a huge influence on many of us, encouraged by remarks of Frederick Engels, who opined, “proteins are the mode of existence of life” and “If you know the formula of something, synthesize it”. Wang and Zou knew that Sanger had determined the sequence of insulin – the formula was known! Starting in 1958, Wang and Zou led a team of scientists from the Institute of Biochemistry in Shanghai and the Department of Chemistry in Peking University, with the ambitious task of synthesizing insulin. This was achieved by 1965, in parallel with work in Aachen and in New York – a truly amazing achievement given the Chinese had to synthesize individual amino acids. In China, a brilliant young biochemist, Zhang You-Shang, went a step further, working out how to achieve the proper joining of the disulfide bonds. A visit by Dorothy Hodgkin to Shanghai convinced the Chinese biochemists that crystallization of synthetic insulin would be an excellent further proof that the synthetic insulin was properly folded. As a result of Dorothy Hodgkin’s visit, a young crystallographer, Liang Dong-Cai, was sent to the UK, first to London to work with Charlie Bunn on protein crystallography at the Royal Institution, and then to Oxford to work in Dorothy’s laboratory on insulin. As a young graduate student in the Department in Oxford, I was fortunate to meet Dong-Cai and talk about both Joseph Needham science and China. I remember walking down South Parks 4 October 2011 © 2011 The Biochemical Society China Features Road in excited discussion with Dong-Cai on the then recent history and the new developments, which were emerging as a Cultural Revolution. Dong-Cai went back to China full of enthusiasm for progress in his country. As it happened, the work on insulin became one of the major themes of Chinese science in the period of the Cultural Revolution. Dong-Cai and his colleagues solved the structure of zinc–insulin independently using methods complementary to those used in our laboratory in Oxford and published in 1969. At that time, publications were not encouraged in China, and it took us some time in Oxford to discover the Downloaded from http://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article-pdf/33/5/4/3914/bio033050004.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 beautiful work completed in Beijing. Dorothy Hodgkin visited Beijing in 1972; Guy and Eleanor Dodson first and then the rest of our insulin team were able to meet up with the Chinese group a few years later and enjoy the wonders of the achievements in both countries. I was lucky to spend 2 weeks giving talks and having discussions every day in the Institute of Biophysics. Dong-Cai later became Pudong skyline, Shanghai Director of the Institute of Biophysics in Beijing following Zou Chenglu. Our visits and exchanges continued over the similar enthusiasm for synthetic biology. As Pei, Schmidt 30 years since then. Dave Stuart and Andy Hemming both and Wei describe in this issue, current research activities spent time in the Institute in Beijing, and Sarah Perrett, are focused on developing useful applications in biofuels, after working in Cambridge, became a Professor in the bio-based chemicals, bioremediation and novel medicine Institute. An account of her work there on amyloids is to as well as learning more about biological systems. China be found in this issue. And it is very appropriate that Sarah is already an international player. And there are studies draws attention to the work on folding of insulin, which to investigate whether there is adequate current research interestingly went on in parallel to that by Nobel Laureate regulation on synthetic biology. The public is beginning Chris Anfinsen in the USA. to be interested since the first ‘synthetic cell’ caught their Modern biochemistry in China is moving fast, but attention in 2010. Workshops on biosafety and ethical proteins are still a continuing focus. The Chinese have issues have been recently held in China. made huge investments in second-generation protein As in the UK, the Government in China is expecting sequencing. They have also invested in other ‘big science’, much from the biochemistry and other biosciences in as readers will see in the article by Zhang and He on their drive towards wealth creation. When I went first to proteomics. After all, alternative splicing of genes and Shanghai more than 30 years ago, Pudong was marshland. post-translational modifications such as glycosylation or In 2002, I found Pudong New Area, a huge science park. phosphorylation give rise to many more proteins than I was tempted to move a branch of our company Astex there are genes. But cell systems are even more complex Therapeutics there, but we felt it would have defocused as Wu and Zhang describe in their review on autophagy our efforts in Cambridge. But now I wonder whether we in China. This lysosome-mediated process of intracellular missed an opportunity. As the Joint Sino–UK symposium degradation plays an important role in a wide variety of in May in Shanghai demonstrated, and this issue of The physiological processes such as adaptation to various Biochemist illustrates well, China and the UK are both metabolic stress and removal of pathogens. It is not aware that biochemistry will not only inform developments surprising that dysregulated autophagy activity is linked to of biologics, bioenergy, new crops and new medicines, but various pathological diseases such as neurodegeneration will also be the source of new wealth creation. The UK and tumorigenesis. will gain much from continuing its collaboration with But these advances in Chinese biochemistry and China during the coming 100 years, just as it has done especially in their applications to health, sustainable food impressively during the last century. ■ production and wealth creation have long been on the agenda. In 1993, I was a guest of the Chinese Academy Sir Tom Blundell was one of the speakers at the recent of Sciences and toured new laboratories throughout Biochemical Society Joint Sino-UK Meeting. Reviews by the country to look at the development of genetic speakers at this meeting will be published this year in modification of food crops in China. I was astonished by volume 39 (part 5) of Biochemical Society Transactions the advances being made. Nearly 20 years later, there is (www.biochemsoctrans.org) October 2011 © 2011 The Biochemical Society 5.

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