Seven Years of Sharpening the Blade: Shanghai Ninth Hospital Team Cracks Key Mysteries of Life Science Through Deep Clinical-Research Collaboration

The team of Lei Ming and Zhang Yanjie from the Department of Oncology at Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital and the Shanghai Institute of Precision Medicine has achieved two consecutive original results. On March 30, 2026, the team published a study in Nature Communications, using cryo-electron microscopy to resolve for the first time the high-resolution structure of the human RNase MRP ribonucleoprotein complex. The work identified two entirely new specific protein subunits, NEPRO and RPP21L, proposed a "dual-anchoring mechanism," and revealed that a difference of merely two nucleotides determines the substrate specificity of RNase MRP versus RNase P - an evolutionary secret hidden for 20 years - thereby overcoming a core challenge that had puzzled the field for three decades.

On May 26, 2026, the team published a full-length article in Vita, identifying for the first time SAGE1, a primate-specific, X-linked novel regulator of the DNA damage response. The protein can accumulate at damage sites within 30 seconds, switching repair to the high-fidelity homologous recombination pathway and greatly reducing the probability of genomic mutations.