Location :Home>accessory>The 17th General Assembly of the Members of CAS>Tan Kah Kee Science Awards
TKK Young Scientist Award in Life Sciences 2014
2014-06-03

Dr. WANG Jun, born in June 1976 at Dongtai of Jiangsu Province, graduated Ph.D. from the Peking University in 2002. He was appointed as Research Fellow at BGI in 2004, and now is the director of BGI and Chief Scientist of 973 Project.  

Prof. WANG has long been engaged in development of bioinformatics algorithms and tools, researches on comparative genomics, molecular evolution, and relevance of genes and complex phenotypes, association study between human commensal microbes and health, and so on. He has published more than 260 SCI papers, the total citations are more than 30,000 times, furthermore, he has more than 100 patents applied or approved domestically or globally. Prof. WANG as an individual has received more than 20 awards, such as "Youth Scientific Award In China", "TAN Jiazhen Life Science Innovation Award", "ZHOU Guangzhao Award", "Award for Excellent Scientific Team Achievements” by Hong Kong “QiuShi” Foundation and World Chinese awards, Nature’s 10 - the year in Science (2012) and so on. 

Award-winning achievement: 

A study of "gut microbial gene catalogue" and its relationship with the type 2 diabetes: The pathogenic factors of complex diseases are usually based on several factors, including genetic factors, environmental factors, diet and their mutual effect. With the help of the next-generation sequencing technology, Prof. WANG Jun and his team carried out severalstudies on genetic factors of diseases from multiple omics levels and completed a series of achievements. The role of diet and environmental factors in the development of complex diseases is always a world challenge. For this study, WANG Jun and his team took the human gut microbiota as an entry point, they successfully built the first “gene catalogue of human gut microbiome” in the world, which includes three million genes, the polymorphisms and similarity of different individuals’ gut microbiota, and preliminary elucidated the associations between gut microbiota and human health. In order to further interpretation, they launched a large-scale case-control study on type 2 diabetes (T2D). They developed a protocol for a metagenome-wide association study (MGWAS), and established the concept of a metagenomic linkage group (MLG) for the first time. As a result, they identified the relationship between T2D and the gut microbiota, and clearly demonstrated the differences on structure and composition of gut microbiota between the T2D patients and the control group. Meanwhile, Prof. WANG and his team verified a series of biomarkers providing a novel method for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of T2D in the future, which could offer novel strategies for functional prevention of the other complex diseases as well. This achievement was awarded as the 2012 China Top Ten diabetes researches -- "Most Influential Research Award." 

Copyright © 2002 - 2014 Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tel: 86-10-68597592 (day) 86-10-68597289 (night) Fax: 86-10-68511095 (day) 86-10-68512458 (night)
Add: 52 Sanlihe Rd., Beijing, China Postcode: 100864 Email: cas_en@cas.cn