Shimin Zhao

Head of the “Metabolic Biochemistry” Innovative Research Group of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education Yangtze River Scholars Award Program
Head of the Ministry of Science and Technology Ten Thousand Talents Program Innovative Research Group
Chief Scientist of the National Major Scientific Research Program (973)
Professor and Vice Dean, Institute of Metabolism and Integrative Biology, Fudan University
Director of the Frontier Platform of the National “Collaborative Innovation Center for Biotherapy”
Professor and Director of the Research Institute, Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University
Professor, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University (joint appointment)
Senior PI, Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University (joint appointment)
Reviewer for grant projects in China, US NSF, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, etc.
Received Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2000, and worked as a scientist at Procter & Gamble in the United States. He returned to China full-time in 2006 to join Fudan University, engaged in basic research on the relationship between nutritional metabolite disorders and human diseases. Contributions after returning to China full-time include: 1. Pioneering discovery of the acetylation regulatory mechanism of metabolic enzymes internationally, opening up a new field of metabolic regulation research, with results included in a special chapter of an internationally used undergraduate textbook (Biochemistry, edited by Garrett & Grisham, 6th edition in 2016); 2. First proposing the concept of metabolite participation in cell signaling pathway regulation internationally, discovering the mechanism by which metabolic enzyme mutations cause tumors, with results included in the authoritative international tumor biology textbook (The Biology of Cancer, by R. Weinberg); 3. Discovering the intracellular amino acid sensing molecular mechanism, revealing the pathogenic mechanism of amino acid disorders.
As first author or corresponding author from Fudan, he has published more than 40 SCI papers including Science (3 articles), Cancer Cell, Cell Metabolism (2 articles), Molecular Cell (2 articles), Circulation, Nature Communications (4 articles) and other well-known academic journals. The results have been featured or reviewed nearly 20 times in journals such as Science, Nature, Cell, Molecular Cell, Cancer Discovery and Nature China (5 times). He has been invited to lecture or report at Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley and numerous international conferences. At least 5 research papers have become hotly cited papers internationally in recent years. The total citations of papers published after returning to China exceed 5,500.
Achievements such as “Discovery of the Acetylation Regulatory Mechanism of Metabolic Enzymes” have been successively selected as the American Chemical Society’s “2010 Super Achievement,” the Ministry of Science and Technology’s “Top Ten Advances in Chinese Science,” the Ministry of Education’s “Top Ten Scientific and Technological Advances in Chinese Universities,” etc., and he has received the “Tan Jiazhen Life Science Innovation Award,” “Meiji Dairy Life Science Outstanding Award,” “WuXi AppTec Scholar Award,” Shanghai’s first “Campus Star – Research Star,” “Shanghai Science and Technology Commission Outstanding Academic Leader” and “Shanghai Leading Talent” and many other personal honors.
Since returning to China, he has led numerous national and municipal-level research projects including the Ministry of Science and Technology 973, Key Basic Research Program (Chief, 2 projects), Major International Cooperation (1 project) projects, Foundation Committee Key projects (4 projects), Major Special Key Support Projects (1 project), Shanghai Basic Research Key Projects, etc., receiving total research funding of over 70 million yuan.

Recent Representative Research Papers Related to Projects (selected from more than 20 published papers, *corresponding author)
1.Ya-Nan Qiao et al.,….Shi-Min Zhao*. Ketogenic diet-produced β-hydroxybutyric acid accumulates brain GABA and increases GABA/ glutamate ratio to inhibit epilepsy. Cell Discovery (2024) （IF：33.5）
2.Kai-Hui Zhang et al.,….Cong-Jian Xu* , Yi-Yuan Yuan* , Shi-Min Zhao*. Follicle stimulating hormone controls granulosa cell glutamine synthesis to regulate ovulation. Protein & Cell (2024) （IF：21.2）
3.Yunzi Mao et al.,….Wei Xu*, Shimin Zhao*. Hypoxia induces mitochondrial protein lactylation to limit oxidative phosphorylation. Cell Research (2024)（IF：44.1）