China's top 10 scientific advances in 2020

4. Research on transmission of human genetic materials

The research published in Nature, led by Dr Li Guohong and Dr Zhu Mingzhao from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has demonstrated that the histone variant H2A.Z facilitates the licensing and activation of early DNA replication origins.

This study describes a novel epigenetic regulation mechanism for DNA replication origin selection and offers a new way of understanding DNA replication regulation in eukaryotes. Importantly, this regulatory pathway can potentially serve as a target for cancer treatment and regulation of T cell function during immunotherapy.