Zhongjun Qin

Personal Information

Principal Investigator
Researcher
Email:qin@sibs.ac.cn
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Research Direction

Research Unit

Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, CAS

Zhongjun Qin

Personal Profile

016- Director of the CAS Key Laboratory of Synthetic biology

2004-2009 Director of Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology

2002-2004 Director of Laboratory of Molecular Regulation for Microbial Secondary Metabolism

2001- Full professor, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences

1995-2001 Post-doctoral fellow and visiting scientist, Laboratory of professor Stanley N. Cohen, Department of Genetics, Stanford University

1994-1995 Associate professor, Huazhong Agricultural University

1993-1994 Assistant professor, Huazhong Agricultural University

1987-1992 Huazhong Agricultural University Ph. D. Microbiology

1983-1987 Wuhan University B. Sc. Microbiolog

Research Work

Synthetic biology was initiated in year 2000 by several USA scientists who had backgrounds of physics and engineer. They thought that the extremely complicated biological systems could be systematic designed and reconstructed engineeringly by the standardized biological devices such as parts, modules and circuits. They have successfully constructed different regulatory gene circuits in organisms, novel pathways for producing chemicals (e.g., artemisinin), even chemical synthesis of the prokaryote Mycoplasma chromosome (i.e. ~1 Mb) and the eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosomes (5 of 16). However, it is unknown that if synthetic biology could also be applied for basic biological researches and to answer important biological questions which classic molecular biologists have hardly addressed. My laboratory is interested in combining the 'hypothesis-driven' of classical molecular biology and the 'engineer-driven' of synthetic biology to address some fundamental biological questions, e.g., chromosome numbers and evolution, chromosome structure and genome function, linear and circular chromosomes etc. Obviously, we choose the prokaryotic model Escherichia coli and the unicellular eukaryote model Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Main Achievements

从事放线菌的分子遗传学研究与应用（1987年至今），系统地研究了放线菌线型质粒和环型质粒的生物学功能，包括复制、重组、修复、接合转移等。建立了粘细菌、高温链霉菌等遗传操作系统，构建了连续删除全部内源PKS/NRPS基因簇的天蓝色链霉菌底盘细胞。与浙江海正药业公司合作，利用基因组工程等技术构建与改良了多拉菌素和尼莫克丁工业菌株，打破了国外的垄断，2011-2014年产值约7.8亿元。

自2011年以来以大肠杆菌和酿酒酵母为材料，开展了合成生物学前沿探索研究。完成了大肠杆菌染色体全部复制基因等的人工成簇化、模块化和定量化测试，发展了MEGA、CasHRA等合成生物学使能技术，完成了国际首例人工创建一条线型和环型染色体的真核酿酒酵母。

在国内外发表论文80余篇，包括Nature, Nucleic Acids Research, Cell Research等国际重要刊物，申请或授权专利10多项。“基因组工程构建多拉菌素工业生产菌及其产业化技术”项目获2014年度上海市技术发明二等奖（排名第一）。目前承担国家基金委重点、上海市重大、中科院先导B等科研项目。

Publications

1. Yangyang Shao, Ning Lu, Xiaoli Xue* and Zhongjun Qin* (2019). Creating functional chromosome fusions in yeast with CRISPR–Cas9. Nature Protocols. 14:2521–2545.

2. Yangyang Shao, Ning Lu, Chen Cai, Fan Zhou, Shanshan Wang, Zhihu Zhao*, Guoping Zhao*, Jinqiu Zhou*, Xiaoli Xue* and Zhongjun Qin* (2019). A single circular chromosome yeast. Cell Research. 29:87–89.

3. Yangyang Shao, Ning Lu, Zhenfang Wu, Chen Cai, Shanshan Wang, Ling-Li Zhang, Fan Zhou, Shijun Xiao, Lin Liu, Xiaofei Zeng, Huajun Zheng, Chen Yang, Zhihu Zhao, Guoping Zhao*, Jinqiu Zhou*, Xiaoli Xue* and Zhongjun Qin* (2018) Creating a functional single chromosome yeast. Nature (article). 560:331–335.

4. Yangyang Shao, Ning Lu, Zhongjun Qin* and Xiaoli Xue* (2018). CRISPR-Cas9 facilitated multiple-chromosome fusion in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. ACS Synthetic Biology. 7(11): 2706–2708.

5. Jianting Zhou, Ronghai Wu, Xiaoli Xue* and Zhongjun Qin* (2016) CasHRA (Cas9-facilitated Homologous Recombination Assembly) method of constructing megabase-sized DNA. Nucleic Acids Research. 4(14):e124.

6. Xiaoli Xue*, Tao Wang, Peng Jiang, Yangyang Shao, Min Zhou, Li Zhong, Ronghai Wu, Jianting Zhou, Haiyang Xia, Guoping Zhao and Zhongjun Qin* (2015) MEGA (Multiple Essential Genes Assembling) deletion and replacement method for genome reduction in Escherichia coli. ACS Synthetic Biology. 4(6):700–706.