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Bai Chunli Awards CAS Foreign Membership Certificate  to David J. Gross 

The Award Ceremony for CAS Foreign Membership Certificate and Forum on the Future of Basic Sciences and Integration of Science and Education were held at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) February 23. Bai Chunli, President of CAS, awarded the certificate to David J. Gross, Nobel Prize Laureat on Physics, and Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) , USA. Bai extended his congratulations and showed his gratitude to all the foreign scholars for their significant contributions to facilitating academic exchanges between China and other countries, and to pushing forward science and education of China. On the forum, David J. Gross, Shing-Tung Yau –Fields Medal Winner and CAS foreign member, and Gerardus’t Hooft–Nobel Prize Winner on Physics and Professor of Utrecht University  delivered speeches related to integration of science and education by coupling their own research experience.

A Series of Progress on Hematopoiesis and Early Embryonic Development

Recently, the Hematopoiesis and Cardiovascular Development Group led by Liu Feng at the Institute of Zoology, CAS, has made a series of progress in hematopoiesis and early embryonic development, utilizing zebrafish model. With the help of genetics, bioinformatics, molecular and cell biology tools, this group identifies a novel regulatory mechanism between BMP and ERK signaling pathways during hematopoiesis. In zebrafish, inhibition of BMP signals or knockdown of its downstream effectors smad1 or smad5l eads to the increase of ERK1/2 expression, indicating that BMP-Smad1/5 negatively regulates ERK1/2 at transcriptional level. ChIP (Chromatin immunoprecipitation) assay shows that Smad1/5 recruits HDAC1 to the erk1/2 promoter region and leads to the decrease of acetylation level, and finally inhibits ERK1/2 expression. Further studies show that the over-activated ERK1/2 signals inhibit hemogenic endothelium formationand endothelial-to-hematopoietic transition through promoting the arterial endothelial cell identity and enhancing the tight junction between endothelial cells. These results are confirmed in the mouse model, and reveal that the cross-talk between BMP and ERK pathways maintains a favorable conditionrequired for the HSC emergence in vertebrates. This study was published on Nature Communications (Zhang et al, Nat Commun, 5:3431, DOI:  doi:10.1038/ ncomms 4431) on March 11th, 2014. PhD student Zhang Chunxia is the first author, and Prof. Liu Feng is the corresponding author of this work.