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Dr Yun ZHANG is a Chinese biologist. He is currently the Director of the Toxin Committee of the Chinese Society of Toxicology, the Chief of the Academic Committee of Kunming Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and serves as a novel drug reviewer of the China Food and Drug Administration, the executive editor-in-chief of Zoological Research and the editorial member of Toxicon, the official journal of the International Society on Toxinology （IST）

肿瘤侵袭和转移是恶性肿瘤的恶性标志和生物学特征．也是导致恶性肿瘤患者治疗失败和死亡的最主要原因。据临床统计，20％～30％的恶性肿瘤患者在就诊时已有远处转移，50％～60％的患者在临床治疗过程中发生远处转移，80％～90％的恶性肿瘤患者最终死于肿瘤转移。因此，肿瘤转移是长期以来困扰肿瘤患者临床治疗疗效和预后的难于逾越的屏障，也是迄今肿瘤学领域未能解决的最大难题。近50年来，肿瘤学、病理学、细胞生物学家对肿瘤侵袭转移的病理解剖学、细胞生物学和临床特征进行了大量的研究，尤其是随着20世纪80年代以后分子生物学理论和技术的发展，并应用到肿瘤侵袭转移研究领域，使肿瘤侵袭转移的研究进入到分子水平，从而使肿瘤转移的研究进入到一个崭新的阶段，并取得了许多新的成果。

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats（CRISPR）-associated protein 9（CRISPR-Cas9） system provides a novel genome editing technology that can precisely target a genomic site to disrupt or repair a specific gene. Some CRISPR-Cas9 systems from different bacteria or artificial variants have been discovered or constructed by biologists, and Cas9 nucleases and single guide RNAs（sgRNA） are the major components of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. These Cas9 systems have been extensively applied for identifying therapeutic targets, identifying gene functions, generating animal models, and developing gene therapies.Moreover, CRISPR-Cas9 systems have been used to partially or completely alleviate disease symptoms by mutating or correcting related genes. However, the efficient transfer of CRISPR-Cas9 system into cells and target organs remains a challenge that affects the robust and precise genome editing activity. The current review focuses on delivery systems for Cas9 mRNA, Cas9 protein, or vectors encoding the Cas9 gene and corresponding sgRNA. Non-viral delivery of Cas9 appears to help Cas9 maintain its on-target effect and reduce off-target effects, and viral vectors for sgRNA and donor template can improve the efficacy of genome editing and homology-directed repair. Safe, efficient, and producible delivery systems will promote the application of CRISPR-Cas9 technology in human gene therapy.

Nathaniel Gist Gee （祁天锡, 1876-1937） was an American biologist who lived in China for several decades. He greatly contributed to the development of biology in modern China, including the establishment of the first Biology Department in China and introducing the biology graduate education to China.

How multicellular organisms control their size is a fundamental question that fascinated generations of biologists. In the past 10 years, tremendous progress has been made toward our understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying size control. Original studies from Drosophila showed that in addition to extrinsic nutritional and hormonal cues, intrinsic mechanisms also play important roles in the control of organ size during development. Several novel signaling pathways such as insulin and Hippo-LATS signaling pathways have been identified that control organ size by regulating cell size and/or cell number through modulation of cell growth, cell division, and cell death. Later studies using mammalian cell and mouse models also demonstrated that the signaling pathways identified in flies are also conserved in mammals. Significantly, recent studies showed that dysregulation of size control plays important roles in the development of many human diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and hypertrophy.

A decade ago mainstream molecular biologists regarded it impossible or biologically ill-motivated to understand the dynamics of complex biological phenomena, such as cancer genesis and progression, from a network perspective. Indeed, there are numerical difficulties even for those who were determined to explore along this direction. Undeterred, seven years ago a group of Chinese scientists started a program aiming to obtain quantitative connections between tumors and network dynamics. Many interesting results have been obtained. In this paper we wish to test such idea from a different angle： the connection between a normal biological process and the network dynamics. We have taken early myelopoiesis as our biological model. A standard roadmap for the cell-fate diversification during hematopoiesis has already been well established experimentally, yet little was known for its underpinning dynamical mechanisms. Compounding this difficulty there were additional experimental challenges, such as the seemingly conflicting hematopoietic roadmaps and the cell-fate inter-conversion events. With early myeloid cell-fate determination in mind, we constructed a core molecular endogenous network from well-documented gene regulation and signal transduction knowledge. Turning the network into a set of dynamical equations, we found computationally several structurally robust states. Those states nicely correspond to known cell phenotypes. We also found the states connecting those stable states.They reveal the developmental routes—how one stable state would most likely turn into another stable state. Such interconnected network among stable states enabled a natural organization of cell-fates into a multi-stable state landscape. Accordingly, both the myeloid cell phenotypes and the standard roadmap were explained mechanistically in a straightforward manner. Furthermore,recent challenging observations were also explained naturally. Moreover, the landscape visually enables a prediction of a pool of additional cell states and developmental routes, including the non-sequential and cross-branch transitions, which are testable by future experiments. In summary, the endogenous network dynamics provide an integrated quantitative framework to understand the heterogeneity and lineage commitment in myeloid progenitors.

＂Professor Chen Hua-Kui dedicated his whole life to the pursuit of truth, the education of the nation, and services for society. The students of Prof. Chen blossom in the research field.＂ The Party Committee of Huazhong Agricultural University appraised. Prof. Chen was a renowned microbiologist and distinguished educator in China.

＂Li Bo was the founder of Plant Ecology in China, the successor of Li Jitong and the pioneer of botany and phytophysiology of China.＂ （Wu Zhengyi, 1980） Li Bo was a brilliant ecologist and botanist. He established the science of Ecology in China in the early 1970s.

The first author, Yu Xue, first read about Dr. Wu in the Sci- enceNet blog written in 2008 by Prof. Yi Rao, an eminent Chinese neurobiologist, who has made a profound and lasting influence on the new generation of Chinese scien- tists, including us. Later, this essay was included in one of his published books, and we carefully read it again during the Spring Festival of 2015. One sentence was quite con- fusing to us, ＂The primer-extension approach developed by Ray Wu （Fig. 1） in 1971, is a key step of DNA sequencing, and deserves a Nobel Pdze. At first we had to laugh at this comment and concluded that Prof. Rao must have been drunk or something when writing this, because all textbooks that we had been aware of stated Sanger sequencing as the first and most important methodology. On top of everything the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dr. Frederick Sanger and Dr. Walter Gilbert ＂for their contributions con- cerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids＂ in 1980, and we strongly doubted whether it would make sense to raise such seemingly meaningless sentiment. Also, in the traditional Chinese culture, understanding the true meaning of someone＇s words can be quite tricky. For example, for grant application, a reviewer＇s comment stating ＂this project MAY be funded＂ should be always interpreted as ＂this project can certainly NOT be funded＂. Thus, we con- cluded that Prof. Rao was being sensationalist in his biog.

Genomes have been studied by biologists for decades with a goal to decipher the origin,evolution,and nature of life on earth.These studies often rely on genetic manipulations such as deletions and insertions（a top-down approach）,but recent advances in DNA synthesis provide a new option—whole genome synthesis（a bottom-up approach）.