The story between Tong Dizhou and Niu Manjiang

Niu Manjiang, born in 1911, is from Baoding, Hebei. He was originally a teaching assistant in the Department of Biology of Southwest Associated University. In 1944, he was selected by the school to study in the United States with a salary. However, he did not come back after receiving his PhD from the Department of Biology at Stanford University in 1947. Instead, he stayed with his mentor and continued to engage in research. In 1955, he transferred to the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research; five years later, he applied for a job in the Department of Biology of Temple University, a relatively ordinary university in the United States, and was promoted to professor in 1962, at the age of 51. .

Since the late 1950s, he has devoted his main energy to studying the induction of embryonic differentiation by mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid). He injected bovine liver cell mRNA into mouse abdominal edema cancer cells, claiming that the growth of cancer cells was effectively controlled, and published many articles. Although further research shows that directly injecting mRNA into people with cancer will not only fail to control cancer cells, but will actually promote their growth. But no matter what, he claimed that this result brought a glimmer of hope for mankind to conquer cancer. His relatives and friends also claimed that Niu Manjiang would win the Nobel Prize.

If Niu Manjiang’s research can really conquer cancer, then winning the Nobel Prize will be just a piece of cake. Unfortunately, his in vitro experiments were also problematic. Some researchers repeated his operation and found that they did not get the same results. They sent people to Niu Manjiang's laboratory and were able to get positive results, but when they returned, they couldn't get them again. Later, they reported the negative results. In 1967, Dr. Hillman, who had worked with Niu Manjiang for a long time, also published an article saying that after leaving Niu Manjiang's laboratory, she could not repeat previous experiments. It is conceivable that these reports have had a very bad impact on Niu Manjiang's scientific reputation.

Niu Manjiang immediately moved to Taiwan. In the summer of 1967, he went to Taiwan to teach at a summer science workshop for 6 weeks. Entering the scientifically backward Chinese society, he was already in his sixties and felt like a fish in water. He quickly conquered the media there: "On July 23, 1967, major newspapers in Taiwan, such as "Central Daily News", "China Daily", "Credit News", "United Daily News", "Young Warrior Daily", etc. all published long reports on Professor Niu Manjiang's scientific research achievements in prominent places, and also introduced his wife's contributions in eye-catching large-character headlines, such as. "Cancer's Challenger Niu Manjiang"; "Cancer is no longer a terminal disease, nucleic acid can cure the disease, Niu Manjiang's experiment is effective, the test tube overflows with wonders" with the subtitle "Shocking the world and becoming famous, high hopes of winning the Nobel Prize"; "Suppressing cancer cells, new discoveries have been made, Niu Manjiang's careful experiments are close to the edge of success"; "More than ten years of battle against cancer, Niu Manjiang's successful experiments"; "The nemesis of cancer", the subtitle is "Dr. Niu Manjiang discovered "RNA" (Li Youhua: "Explorer of the Mysteries of Life—Niu Manjiang", China Agricultural Science and Technology Press, 1988) Soon after, he was also received by political figures such as Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo, and Yan Jiagan. What made him even more happy was that in 1970, like many Chinese-American professors, he was also elected as an academician of Academia Sinica.

But Taiwan is just a small place after all. After Nixon visited China in 1972, Niu Manjiang wanted to develop in the mainland again. He contacted the Chinese Embassy in Canada and returned to his motherland after 28 years in the summer of that year. As one of the first American scientists to visit China after the thaw of Sino-US relations, he, like Yang Zhenning, was received by Zhou Enlai and other leaders for understandable reasons, and was hailed as the "envoy of friendship" between China and the United States. . In May 1973, he arrived in Beijing on the same plane as D. Bruce, the first director of the U.S. Liaison Office in China, and began to cooperate with Tong Dizhou, director of the Department of Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of the Institute of Zoology, to carry out scientific research. "A great example of Sino-foreign scientific and technological exchanges."

His frequent contacts with China’s top leaders made politicians at all levels look upon him with admiration. The then director of the National Science and Technology Commission gave him full support. And he did use this status and his relationship in the United States, especially with the Rockefeller Foundation, to do some things related to Sino-US exchanges, such as inviting some American scientists to visit China, helping China contact and purchase some instruments, and doing research for Chinese scientists. Get some funding, etc.

Of course, a person who has so much political halo and likes to show himself in front of reporters will be hyped by the media. Throughout the 1970s, he was one of China's most popular scientific stars. In addition to the title of "American Professor", he has also been dubbed "a scientific giant", "a world-famous biologist", "a world-famous scientist", "a person about to win the Nobel Prize", "the father of ribonucleic acid", etc. title. The result that he and Professor Tong Dizhou published in 1973 - that injecting mRNA into the eggs can induce the development of double-tailed goldfish into single-tailed goldfish - was seriously questioned in 1974, and no one has been able to repeat it so far. , is still reported as one of China's most significant scientific and technological achievements since 1949 (Professor Tong Dizhou is just a classic experimental embryologist. Especially after being impacted by the "Cultural Revolution" and cleaning toilets for many years, he has made great achievements in molecular biology. The field has lagged behind the times.

In the collaborative research, the relevant experiments were mainly designed by Niu Manjiang. In addition, the impure mRNA used for injection was also provided by Niu Manjiang, so Niu Manjiang should be mainly responsible for the entire work). The publicity surrounding him was so intense that many Chinese thought he had won the Nobel Prize.

However, this set of affirmations by political figures and hype by the media does not work with foreign scientists - they only recognize scientific experiments that can be repeated and solid scientific papers. At the end of April 1980, at the Second International Nucleic Acid Conference—which was held at the Jingxi Hotel in Beijing—they had a fierce conflict with Niu Manjiang, who was the host. The first instigator was D. Baltimore, the 1975 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine and the discoverer of reverse transcriptase. He asserted that there is no reverse transcriptase in the tissues or cells of higher organisms, which caused other biologists here to express their disapproval of Niu Manjiang's paper - putting soybean mRNA into rice, soybean protein appeared in the developed seeds; Niu Manjiang et al. It was explained that this was because soybean mRNA was reverse-transcribed into soybean DNA—which aroused suspicion. Then, after the meeting, W. Gilbert, the 1980 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and one of the founders of DNA sequencing methods, also fiercely criticized Niu Manjiang: "Niu Manjiang is the Lysenko of China. He wants to China's biological science has gone astray. Niu Manjiang's work is alchemy and there is no comparative experiment." His remarks were later published in the Washington Post.