On March 29, at the invitation of Guangzhou institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Craig C. Mello, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine visited GIBH, and gave a lecture entitled: "RNAi: From Mechanism to Medicine". The 46-yearl-old Nobel Laureate was warmly welcomed by more than 300 scientific researchers present at the lecture hall.
Prof. Mello is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a Howard Hughs Medical Institute Investigator, and also a recipient of the CAS Albert Einstein Visiting Professorship in 2007. In his lecture, Prof. Mello introduced his finding with his colleague Dr. Fire on the mechanism of RNAi process, which was honored the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and remarkably, the new discoveries taking place in his laboratories. Their RNAi finding was named by Science magazine the 2002 "Breakthrough of the Year" and, was also on Science\'s list of the top 10 scientific advances in 2003. RNAi is now the state-of-the-art method by which scientists can "knock out" the expression of specific genes to thus define the biological functions of those genes, and is regarded as “opening a new window on developmental gene regulation”.
After the lecture, Dr. CHEN Ling, Director-General of GIBH awarded Prof. Mello the Letter of Appointment for International Scientific Advisor of GIBH, as well as special gift – a Chinese seal with Prof. Mello’ name in both English and Chinese, and the Title of “GIBH International Scientific Advisor” carved on it. After the appointment ceremony, Prof. Mello signed agreements with GIBH on scientific and academic collaborations and held discussions with the investigators and graduate students of the institute.
