On April 6th, Professor Deng Zixin, a CAS academician, from the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology (SLSB) gave a lecture titled " Innovation and Production of High-end One Health Synthetic Biology Products " to more than 200 undergraduate and postgraduate students from SLSB.

During the lecture, Prof. Deng introduced synthetic biology systematically. He mentioned that synthetic biology involves understanding biological system, thus designing synthetic routes accordingly, and eventually leading to creation of target products. Deng said synthetic biology is a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional life sciences research field, which is application-oriented and engineering-aided. He pointed out that synthetic biology is a highly integrated comprehensive discipline system, which plays an important rule in future social and scientific development.

Followed by that, Deng gave a few classic examples, such as synthesis of vitamin E from farnesene, domestic production of spinosad, among other new drug designs and synthetic methods using biological synthesis. He said that there is more to be discovered and accomplished in synthetic biology and he encouraged every student attended this lecture to explore further and innovate more in this area. He also shared his scientific research insights over the years that successful researches relied on observation, creativity, and imagination. Last but not least, Deng introduced his latest research results on DNA sulfur modification, and proposed the possibility of designing targeted antisense nucleic acid drugs based on biological sulfur modification. After the lecture, he answered a few questions from the audience about his latest research progress and his view on how to choose the suitable research field after graduation. In the end, Deng expressed his expectations that the students would uptake their responsibilities, and devote themselves to biological sciences to achieve excellent research results in the future.