At the invitation of Professor Xu Jianhong from Institute of Crop Science, Professor Joachim Messing from Rutgers University, the Director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, visited Zhejiang University.

Prof. Messing gave the lecture of “Crop Quality and Safety” 111 project titled “Quality Protein Maize Plus”. Nutrition improvement has been the goals of maize breeding for all scientists, but due to the effect of recessive opaque2 gene, it is hard to get high lysine Quality Protein Maize (QPM). prof. Messing developed a rapid and efficient method to obtain the high lysine and high methionine QPM by producing transgenic maize achieved through leaf-specific expression of the Escherichia coli enzyme 3’-phosphoadenosine-5’-phosphosulfate reductase (EcPAPR) combined with knocking down g-prolamin genes expression, which greatly reduced the maize breeding periods, and is expected to get a wide range of advantages for animal feeding.

Prof. Messing and his colleagues developed the shotgun DNA sequencing method and the M13mp/pUC/JM cloning kits, which helped creating the field of plant genomics with a focus on raising the nutritional quality of food. For his remarkable achievement, Prof. Messing and his colleagues received the World Technology Award in Biotechnology and the USDA Secretary’s Honor Award. He was the winner of the 2013 Wolf Prize in Agriculture and the 2014 Promega Biotechnology Award of the American Society of Microbiology.

During the visiting of Zhejiang University, Prof. Messing made academic communication with teachers and students from Institute of Crop Science, and discussed the intention of further in-depth cooperation between Institute of Crop Science and Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers University.