Caixia Gao's Team Receives the Second Prize of the 2025 State Natural Science Award

On July 8, 2026, the research achievement entitled “Precision Genome Editing for Crop Trait Improvement,” nominated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, received the Second Prize of the 2025 State Natural Science Award, P.R. China. The work was led by Professor Gao Caixia and completed by a research team including Professor Qiu Jinlong, Professor Wang Yanpeng, and Associate Researcher Chen Kunling. The team systematically addressed several major scientific challenges, including solutions to unintended off-target effects of base editors, precise quantitative regulation of agronomic traits, and coordinated improvement of multiple traits in crops with complex genomes. Their work has made important contributions to both theoretical and technological innovation in precision genome editing for crop trait improvement and has elevated China's plant genome-editing research to advanced international levels.

Caixia Gao’s Team discovered previously unrecognized off-target effects associated with base editing and elucidated the underlying molecular mechanisms. They also identified a new mechanism by which genome editing can quantitatively regulate gene expression, provided the first demonstration that complex polyploid genomes can be directionally manipulated through genome editing, and revealed a mechanism that enables the simultaneous improvement of powdery mildew resistance and high yield in wheat. These research achievements have received widespread international recognition. Six representative papers were published in leading journals, including Nature, Science, and Nature Biotechnology. Collectively, these papers have received 2,226 citations in the Science Citation Index, with three designated as ESI Highly Cited Papers.

Professor Gao Caixia, the principal investigator of this project, has delivered more than 70 invited presentations at major international conferences and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Science and Cell. She has also been invited to contribute more than 20 review articles to leading journals such as Nature and Cell and to prepare a thematic report on “Genome Editing and Agrifood Systems” for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Her honors include the National Innovation Excellence Award Certificate and the Tan Jiazhen Life Science Innovation Award. She was named one of Nature’s “Ten Science Stars of China,” selected for the New Cornerstone Investigator Program, and elected as a foreign member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.