In 2011, Yuan joined the project, and helped Boeke to build a consortium that attracted scientists from Britain, France, Singapore and elsewhere. Yuan and his team undertook the job of assembling two chromosomes. A year later, he successfully applied for national funding.
BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE
The study has laid a foundation for the design and building of more complex cells of multi-cellular organisms, including animals, plants and fungi.
Yuan compares his synthetic chromosomes study to "constructing a building." Before joining the synthetic yeast genome project, Chinese scientists had mainly focused on the "bricks," or DNA. "We didn't have the confidence and courage to think about building the foundations," Yuan says.
In the past five years, Yuan has sent many exchange students from Tianjin to U.S. universities to learn synthetic technology, and brought the "Build-A-Genome" course to China.
"It was not a one-way flow of information at all," says Boeke. "Chinese scientists also brought some great ideas to us, such as the study documented in Science."
Xie Zexiong, 27, responsible for constructing chromosome SynV, faced a predicament in 2014 when he and other researchers failed to find what was killing the synthetic genome. At first, he thought it was incorrect manipulation. But after 18 months of testing and building, he found the problem lay in the original design, which lacked a DNA sequence.
U.S. scientists were skeptical until they did the test themselves. His discovery was then applied to synthesizing other chromosomes.
George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard University, said the redesign and re-engineering of the SynV chromosome was "perfect."
"Since then their skepticism of Chinese students appears to have evaporated," says Xie.
Wu Yi, 28, the first author of the SynX paper, discovered a new method to quickly identify and eliminate bug sequences, and it is now applied to other chromosome research.
He remembers the day he shared his debugging tools in the United States with researchers from around the world. The audience, including professors and leading scientists in synthetic biology, applauded. "I was a bit humble at first because it was I who developed the most efficient bug mapping method by far," says Wu.
Yuan attributes the success of his team to hard work and global cooperation. "We would struggle to do it alone, even with 10 times as much financial support."
"Chinese teams learned from others' experiences at first, but also worked hard and contributed to the whole study. Because of this, we won the respect around the world."
China aims to become a leading power in science and technology by the middle of this century, and is endeavoring to speed up innovation in all fields and seize the initiative in global competition.
