Recently, Nucleic Acids Research, an internationally renowned academic journal, published online the latest progress made by the State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering and School of Bioengineering, ECUST, in the research of capturing large gene clusters of actinomycetes and activating silent gene clusters to discover novel active natural products. The research article is entitled “Activating crypticbiosynthetic gene cluster through a CRISPR-Cas12a mediated direct cloningapproach”.

The article is co-first-authored by Doctoral Candidates of Liang Mindong, Zeng Xiaoqian, Mastoral Candidate Liu Leshi of ECUST and research Xu Fei of Zhejiang University, and is corresponding-authored by Associate researcher Tan Gaoyi of Professor Zhang Lixin’s research team of the State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, ECUST. The State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering and College of Bioengineering of ECUST is the only corresponding academic affiliation of the article. The research work has been financially supported by National key R&D Plan and National Natural Science Foundation.