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The National Natural Science Foundation of China announced the "Top 10 Scientific Advances of 2023, China" on February 29th. The team of Caixia Gao from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the team of Tianmeng Zhao from Beijing Qi-biodesign Biotech Co., Ltd., achieved one of the top ten advances: "A New Method for Precise Manipulation of DNA from Single Bases to Extra-Large Fragments." This achievement has realized multi-level innovation in genome editing in terms of method establishment, technology development, and tool application.

The team used AI-assisted structural prediction to establish a brand-new strategy for functional protein mining based on the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Using this strategy, they mined a large number of novel deaminases that had not been correctly classified and identified before, and developed a series of new base editors with significant application value—CyDENT. This editor is capable of performing precise base editing in the nucleus and organelles of cells and possesses complete and independent intellectual property rights.

At the same time, the team developed the first precision targeted insertion technology for large DNA fragments in plants, laying a technical foundation for efficient crop breeding and plant synthetic biology.

Additionally, the research team has utilized genomic editing to achieve precise regulation of crop traits, further expanding the application scope of gene-editing in biological breeding and accelerating the innovation of germplasm resources.