Recently, the EU Academy of Sciences released its annual report of 2018. Professor Zhang Yiguo of the School of Bio-engineering, Chongqing University was selected as Member of the EU Academy of Sciences of 2018. The Members of 2018 have been selected by the 2018 Council made up of 10 Nobel Prize winners and president of the EU Academy of Sciences. The membership granted to Professor Zhang Yiguo embodies appreciation of the scientific community of EU for the academic contribution made by Professor Zhang Yiguo and its team.

It is reported that the EU Academy of Sciences is an international scientific organization made up of outstanding scientists, scholars and business figures from all over the world, and is also one of the most reputable academies of sciences in the Europe. The EU Academy of Sciences, as an independent and non-profit international scientific organization, was established to serve society, science and technology worldwide. It comprises four faculties, and covers areas including engineering, physics, mathematics, chemistry, environment science, medicine, social science, law and economics. The EU Academy of Sciences has selected more than 500 academicians from 47 countries worldwide, including more than 30 Nobel Prize winners.

Professor Zhang Yiguo studied in Minnesota in 1998. He was among the first ones to study the molecular mechanism of cell signaling transduction network and ultraviolet radiation induced cancer. During that period, he was selected as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2003, he went to the UK and became a student of John D. Hayes, Fellow of the Royal Society. During that period, he was engaged in research of cancer prevention and biological function of Nrf1/2/3 as an antioxidant molecule. He was selected as FRSMed in 2007 thanks to his remarkable contribution to function revealing, galactosylated modification, structural domain classification and subcellular localization of trans-membrane transcription factor Nrf1. In 2010, he started to work for Chongqing University, and then continued to focus on research of topobiology of Nrf1 and its phenotype and disease gene mechanism. The entire molecule was locally “dissected” to analyze the topological processing process of protein after translation. The topology deciding element that decides the internal and external “overturn” of the endoplasm omentum was found, and the impact of temporal and spatial change of topological structure on gene control and cytobiology function on the molecular subcellsular level was revealed. In particular, the subversive finding of the team was that the third mode of trans-membrane protein processing, regulated juxtamembrane proteolysis, would deepen the topology genetics regulation mechanism of Nrf1. This mode was totally different from the first mode of signal peptide processing (found by Günter Blobel, who won the Nobel Prize in 1999 for this finding), and was also totally different from the second mode of intramembrane processing ATF6/SREBP1 (accomplished by the teams led by Goldstein and Brown through 10 years of research efforts. The two scientific giants won the 1985 Nobel Prize for discovering the metabolic mechanism of cholesterol). What’s more, Professor Zhang Yiguo discovered that Nrf1D is the first candidate secreting type transcription factor in the plasma. Its precursor detects the internal and external redox or cholesterol status of panniculus adiposus.

Such achievements have been made with support of the general program of the National Natural Science Foundation and the major research program. Professor Zhang Yiguo has been studying Nrf1 for 16 years, and has gradually integrated conceptually the “topobiology” assumption proposed by Gerald M. Edelman, molecular cell biology, genetics or epigenetics, so as to allow it to expand from morphogenesis to membrane protein topological structure manifold, and shift from information stream to gene control in biology, thus determining the cell type and steady-state integrity of differentiated tissue and organ. This newly expanded topobiology concept also includes topological genetics, which was initiated and verified by the scientific research team led by Zhang Yiguo, and was well received by the international academic community. As such, besides precise biomedicine qualitative and quantitative analysis, the new area “topobiology” will be expanded to allow the life health science to enter the new era of integrated mathematical analysis of “topobiology”.