LAUSR

Dr. Shao-Jun Liu is an expert in fish genetic breeding, who was born in 1962 in Changsha, Hunan province, China. He received his B.S. in biology in 1986 and his M.S. in zoology in 1989 at Hunan Normal University. He obtained his Ph.D. in zoology in 2000 at Sun Yat-sen University. From 1998 to 1999, he was supported by the China Scholarship Council to research fish molecular biology in France. In 2019, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and currently, he is a Professor at Hunan Normal University and the Director of the State Key Laboratory of the Developmental Biology of Freshwater Fish. Dr. Liu has published more than 130 papers as the first or corresponding author in a substantial number of international journals, including Genome Research, PNAS, and Genetics. He also wrote a book entitled Fish Distant Hybridization. As the leader of the research team, Dr. Liu has received many awards, including two items of second-class prize of the “National Scientific and Technological Progress Award”, a first-class prize of the “Science and Technology of Hunan Province Award”, a first-class prize of the “Technology Invention of Hunan Province Award”, the “National Innovation and Advance Award”, the “Hunan Guangzhao Science and Technology Award”, and the “DBN Award for Science and Technology (Fisheries)”. Dr. Liu has also achieved the honorary titles of “National May First Labor Medal”, “National Outstanding Science and Technology Worker”, “National Outstanding Teacher”, and “Hunan Scientific and Technological Pioneer”. He has also obtained 26 national invention patents for the work of the research team. He has supervised 25 doctoral students and 73 graduate students who have made outstanding contributions to the Chinese fishery industry. What is more, Dr. Liu has led more than 30 state or province-level research projects, including the National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He is also a member of the editorial board of some academic journals, such as Frontiers in Genetics (Livestock Genomics), Acta Hydrobiologica Sinica, Journal of Fisheries of China, and Journal of Fishery Sciences of China. Dr. Liu leads a team conducting long-term research on distant hybridization in fish. This team has overcome the difficulties of breeding reproductively isolated species and has explored the mechanisms of inheritance and distant hybridization in fish. In addition, the fish hybridization technologies have been established, including one-step and multi-step breeding technologies, which are suitable for both interspecific and intraspecific hybridization. The team has produced a series of fertile lineages using these fish hybridization technologies, including diploid and tetraploid fish lineages, which have been used as new genetic resources to produce improved fishes. The research team first demonstrated the evolutionary pathway of koi carp-red crucian carp-goldfish, providing important evidence for the hybrid origin of the red crucian carp and goldfish. Using these fish hybridization technologies, they have generated four improved varieties with faster growth rates, higher quality of flesh, and higher resistance to disease, which have received certification as new aquatic varieties approved by the government and have had economic and social benefits. In short, the team led by Dr. Liu has made systematic and innovative achievements in theory-technology-products in the field of distant hybridization in fish. This team has also been successful in conducting fish gynogenesis and androgenesis.