AWARDEE OF LIFE SCIENCE PRIZE

SHI LUJI

Abstract

Professor Shi LuJi (L. C. Sze) was born in Yizheng County, Jiangsu Province in November, 1917 and graduated from Zhejiang University  in 1940, and Graduate School of Science of Zhejiang University in 1944.
He went to study at Columbla University, USA in 1946.  In the Department of Zoology he received Ph.  D. in 1951.  His dissertation work was concerned with the respiratory gradients f the frog gastrula.  He demonstrated that the gastrula has two respiratory gradients, namely the animal-vegetal and dorsal-ventral gradients when dry weight is used as reference standard. In cooperation with L. G. Barth, he also made investigation on the biochemical gradients of the frog gastrula with ultramicro chemical methods.  Moreover, he paid attention at the same tune to other problems such as the metabolism of amphibian hybrid, DNA synthesis during development etc.
After his return to China in 1955, Professor Shi went to Beijing with Professor Bei Shi Zhang to organize the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and to set up his own research laboratory. Inspired by the works of bacteria transformation and chromosome studies of other investigaters, He proposed the genetic transformation of higher animals and the construction of vertebrate chromosomes as the long-range projects of his laboratory. Perhaps he was one of the first few, if not the first one, who realized that the genetic transformation of higher animals should be done on fertilized eggs rather than on whole animals. Using Rana nigromaculata as biological material, he developed techniques of microinjecting    DNA and chromatin into the fertilized eggs and made a series of important studies.  He first determined the maximum amount of DNA or chromatin, which would not interfere in the normal development and tried to find out whether isolated centromeres could be generated from the injected chromatin.  One of the results from these studies is that nucleus can be organized from the injected chromatin by the fertilized Rana eggs.  More than twenty years later the same fmding was independently obtained by several other investigators.
Professor Shi formally shifted to the Shanghai Institute of Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1978.  He and his wife, Professor Ni Zumel formed a research team to restart the study on the vertebrate artificial chromosomes and the genetic transformation of higher animals.
They have done a series of studies on the nature of centromeres, screening the antibodies of kinetochores, developing a separation method for the centromeres, cloning centromenc DNA and cloning telomere DNA.  In 1985, he proposed using whole domestic animals, especially their mammary glands as bloreactor in stead of mechanical and electric bioreactor. With this idea and in cooperation with other research groups, they have done fairly extensive works on transgenic animals by using rabbit as model.  At the same tune, using autoimmune antibodies from scleroderma patients, they analysed the proteins of some cellular structures, especially those of chromosome pellicle, and nucleolus.
Professor Shi has concurrently been Professor in several biological research institutes of the Academy and chairman of Department of Life Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, and is concurrently Professor of Fudan University.  In 1980, he was elected as Member, Division of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.