Genetic modification of large animals, Human and animal stem cells, Animal cloning

As a principal investigator, Dr. Lai has been undertaking many national major scientific research programs, such as 973 program (National Program on Key Basic Research Projects), 863 Program (National High-tech R&D Program of China). He has published more than 150 peer review papers in the international journals including “Science”, “PNAS”, “Nature Biotechnology” and “Cell”. In 2000, Dr. Lai and his team made the first knock-out pigs in the world by using nuclear transfer approach, in which α -1,3-Galactosyltransferase gene was deleted, and considered as a major breakthrough in the organ transplantation from pigs to human and chosen as only milestone progress of  the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), USA. He was a winner of Best of What’s New Grand Award from Popular Science in the medical Technology category, 2002. His two achievements were listed as world top 100 science news story by Discover magazine. As of now, his team has produced more than 70 kinds of genetically modified large animals including pigs, dogs and rabbits with important applications in biomedicine and agriculture.

1. Sen Yan, Zhuchi Tu, Zhaoming Liu,……,Shihua Li*, Liangxue Lai*, Xiao-Jiang Li*. A Huntingtin Knockin Pig Model RecapitulatesFeatures of Selective Neurodegeneration in Huntington’s Disease. Cell. 2018 May;173(4):989-1002

2. Kepin Wang,Qin Jin,……, Xiaoping Li*, Liangxue Lai*. Cre-dependent Cas9-expressing pigs enable efficient in vivo genome editing. Genome Res. 2017 Dec;27(12):2061-2071

3. Qingjian Zou, Xiaoming Wang,……Jun Ying *, Liangxue Lai *, Xiang Gao *. Generation of gene-target dogs using CRISPR/Cas9 system. J Mol Cell Biol. 2015 Dec;7(6):580-583

4. Xiaoping Li, Yi Yang,……,Zhong Wang*, Liangxue Lai*. Rosa26-targeted swinemodels for stable gene over-expression and Cre-mediated lineage tracing.CellRes. 2014 Apr;24(4):501-504

5.Liangxue Lai, Donna Kolber-Simonds,……,Randall S Prather*. Production of α -1,3-Galactosyltransferase Knockout Pigs by Nuclear Transfer Cloning. Science. 2002 Feb;295(5557):1089-1092