AWARDEE OF LIFE SCIENCES PRIZE

SUN DAYE

Sun Daye, a cell biologist, professor of Hebei Normal University, was born in Zhejiang Province on  July  25, 1937. He graduated from the Beijing Agriculture University. For many years, he worked on the field of signal transduction of plant and got systemic and innovative research results in the area of plant extracellular calmodulin.  Traditionally, plant biologists thought that plant cell can not utilize the polypeptide signals like in the animal cells. Calmodulin was only a intracellular Ca2+ receptor protein. Through more than ten years works, not only did professor Sun and his group prove that the presence of calmodulin in the outside of the cell is universal, but also got the evidences for that calmodulin have its functions extracellularly and presence of transmembrane mechanism for its function. His academic idea that calmodulin was the first messenger of polypeptide signal were remarked as“...a breakthrough of traditional idea” “ Probably... open a new field for plant cell biology”. He also raised the idea that presence of polypeptide signals in the apoplast are universal and the  presence of compatible messenger are universal for biological cells. Their publication on the Plant Cell, a international authority journal, were appraised “First one of the work  independently completed in the domestic” and published in the Plant Cell. The many years works of prof. Sun prompted the domestic research of signal transduction, especially the research of the plant signal transduction. Prof Sun and his research group published more than 130 scientific papers, which were cited by others more than 340 times.  He and his group were awarded the first prize of Hebei Science and Technology Progress two times (1990,1995) and the second prize of National Educational Ministry(1998), In 2001,he was elected  academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences.