Biography

Prof. Zixin Deng received his PhD in Microbial Genetics from the University of East Anglia (1987) while working in the Streptomyces group at the John Innes Centre. He is currently the honorary dean of the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wuhan University. Prof. Zixin Deng is a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and Fellow of the Science Academy for the Developing World. His research interests center around synthetic biology, Streptomyces genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology of antibiotic biosynthesis, and phosphorothiolation of DNA.

Research

Over the past decades, Prof. Zixin Deng has developed efficient gene-editing and BGC direct-cloning and screening systems for several important antibiotics producers, and has cloned more than 100 BGCs of important natural products. Moreover, his research team has designed and generated more than 10 artificial hybrid antibiotics with improved activities. Most importantly, Prof. Deng has revealed the first phosphonothioation modification on DNA backbone, opening up a fascinating new research field of microbial epigenetics.

Representative  Publications

1. Sheng Y^#, Wang H^#, Ou Y, Wu Y, Ding W, Tao M, Lin S, Deng Z^*, Bai L^*, Kang Q^*. (2023) Insertion sequence transposition inactivates CRISPR-Cas immunity. Nat Commun. 14(1):4366.

2. Tao H^#, Lauterbach L, ^# Bian G^#, Chen R, Hou A, Mori T, Cheng S, Hu B, Lu L, Mu X, Li M, Adachi N, Kawasaki M, Moriya T, Senda T, Wang X, Deng Z, Abe I^*, Dickschat JS^*, Liu T^*. (2022) Discovery of non-squalene triterpenes. Nature. 606(7913):414-419.

3. Yuan Y^#, Cheng S^#, Bian G^#, Yan P, Ma Z, Dai W, Chen R, Fu S, Huang H, Chi H, Cai Y, Deng Z, Liu T^*. (2022) Efficient exploration of terpenoid biosynthetic gene cluster in filamentous fungi. Nat Catal. 5(4):277-287.

4. Yu L^#, Zhou W^#, She Y^#, Ma H, Cai Y-S, Jiang M, Deng Z, Price NPJ^*, Chen W^*. (2021) Efficient biosynthesis of nucleoside cytokinin angustmycin A containing an unusual sugar system. Nat Commun. 12(1):6633.

5. Xiong X^#, Wu G, Wei Y, Liu L, Zhang Y, Su R, Jiang X, Li M, Gao H, Tian X, Zhang Y, Hu L, Chen S, Tang Y, Jiang S, Huang R, Li Z, Wang Y, Deng Z, Wang J, Dedon PC, Chen S^*, Wang L^*. (2020) SspABCD-SspE is a phosphorothioation-sensing bacterial defence system with broad anti-phage activities. Nat Microbiol. 5(7):917-928.