Recently, Professor Jason Chin's team from the MRC Molecular Biology Laboratory (MRC-LMB) in Cambridge, UK, published a paper titled Establishing a Synthetic Orthogonal Replication System Enables Accelerated Evolution IneIn Coli's article, Tian Rongzhen, a 2022 Ph.D. alumnus of the School of Bioengineering, is the first author and co-corresponding author.
In this study, a special linear plasmid replication system was developed for the first time in E. coli using the virulent bacteriophage prD1, and the orthogonal replication of target DNA was successfully achieved, that is, only the target DNA was copied without replicating the host genome. At the same time, combined with the engineered positive transaction error DNA polymerase, only mutation of target DNA without mutation of host genome in cells was realized, an efficient and stable directed evolution system was established, and the convenient establishment of high-quality mutant libraries was realized. This paper breaks the previous belief that orthogonal replication systems can only be edited from naturally occurring linear plasmid systems, and develops a replication origin that requires only 18 bp ITR and can be loaded with more than 16The 5 kb large DNA fragment with flexible copy number control of the eECOREP continuous evolution system provides a simple, stable and scalable platform for rapid continuous evolution within E. coli. This will greatly accelerate the development of strains for the production of various molecular biology tools, biopharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals.
Tian Rongzhen is a 2014 undergraduate student in the National Life Science and Technology Talent Training Base Class of the School of Bioengineering, Jiangnan University, a 2017 master's student in fermentation engineering, and a 2018 doctoral student in fermentation engineering. As a Ph.D. in synthetic biology, he has published many SCI articles in Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Communications, Metabolic Engineering, and Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology as the first author during his 8-year study career at Jiang University. He has applied for 7 invention patents, including 2 domestic invention patents and 1 international invention patent. He has won 1 national honor, 1 provincial and municipal honor, and more than 30 school-level honors, such as the National Scholarship, Zhang Qixian Scholarship, and First-class Academic Scholarship.
In 2022, he went to the MRC Molecular Biology Laboratory in Cambridge, UK to engage in postdoctoral research under the supervision of Professor Jason Chin, an internationally renowned leader in synthetic biology, a member of the British Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the Royal Society. He is currently a member of the Postdoctoral Association of Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
Screenshot of the article. 
Tian Rongzhen's personal photo.