Chinese scientist maps important genetic machine

BEIJING, Aug. 24 -- Chinese scientists have made a monumental breakthrough in understanding the structure and mechanism of the spliceosome, arguably the most complex macromolecular machine in genetics.

Shi Yigong, dean of the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University, announced the findings following the publication of two papers in the U.S. journal Science.

Shi's lab used the latest cryo-EM technology, which is used to study the architecture of cells, to map the structure of the spliceosome at atomic resolution. His findings improved the resolution by almost eight times, he said.

"Mapping spliceosome has been extremely difficult because it is very dynamic, and exists in a series of distinct conformations, with different components," Shi said.

"We produced a high-resolution structure of the spliceosome and uncovered how the splicing process worked. This will help us understand the genetic process as well as genetic disorders, 35 percent of which are caused in the splicing process", he said.

"I have been dedicated to spliceosome research for the last six years," he added.

"The two recent Science papers from Shi's lab are a fantastic breakthrough [...] This is the last great unsolved mega-complex, and the wait has been very long wait indeed," said Jack Szostak, Nobel laureate and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

"This is a wonderful new window into the working of this remarkably complex molecular machine [...] This work is important because it opens the door to further advances," said Szostak.

"Much, however, remains to be done [we] can anticipate additional structures of the spliceosome at different stages along the splicing pathway, as well as the possibility of structures at an even higher resolution," he said.

Zhou was previously a professor at Princeton University. He is a Foreign Associate of the U.S National Academy of Sciences and an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.