z-bio 2025-07-03 2698

　　On June 18, 2025, Science and Cell both released the latest research results of Fu Qiaomei's team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Narure's official website headline reported this, and she achieved a new record of becoming one of the top three issues in a day.
      These two results are named The protein of the late Middle Pleistocene Harbin individual.

　　And Denisovan Mitochondrial DNA from Dental Calculus of the > 146,000-year-old Harbin Cranium, the research results conducted molecular paleontological research on the nearly complete skull of the Harbin paleobiology, which is at least 146,000 years ago.

　　As early as May 29, Fu Qiaomei's team published a paper titled Prehistoric genomes from Yunnan reveal ancestor related to Tibetans and Austroasiatic speakers in Science, capturing 127 ancient human genomes from 17 sites in Yunnan, dating more than 7,100 years ago.

　　It is reported that the nearly complete Meso-Pleistocene human skull fossils discovered in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China were officially named as a new race, namely "Homo longi". Morphological analysis showed significant similarity to the Denisova mandible found in the Baishiya Cave on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

　　Fu Qiaomei and Ji Qiang's team established a method system for fully automated identification of people with paleoprotein. They obtained the highest quality paleoman proteome data to date from the skull fossils found in Harbin, China (identified 20,455 peptides and 95 endogenous proteins), and found 4 Denisovan-endova-end mutation sites with a matching rate of 86.57%.

　　The study also innovatively extracted trace amounts of paleo DNA from 0.3 mg tartar samples, screened short fragments (≤60 bp) through independent development algorithms, and confirmed 27 Denisovan-specific mutation sites and 5 early Siberian lineage sites, confirming that the skull host mitochondrial DNA belongs to the early Denisovan branch.

　　The two studies confirm each other, linking a nearly complete ancient human skull with the molecular evidence of the Denisovans (including paleoprotein and paleoprotein) for the first time. It not only explains the ancient DNA and paleoprotein information of the "Dragon Man", but also reveals the more complete skull morphology of the Denisovans.

　　Cell reviewers said the study: "Give the Denisovans a 'face'", which opened up a new path for studying other ancient human fossils in East Asia that may belong to the Denisovans.

　　Fu Qiaomei, born in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province in 1983, graduated from Northwestern University in 2007, graduated from Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009, and graduated from the Marx Planck Institute of Evolutionary Mankind in Germany in 2013 (student from Svante Pääbo, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology). After graduating from her PhD, she conducted postdoctoral research at the institute and Harvard Medical School in the United States. In 2016, Fu Qiaomei returned to China to join the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has been the deputy director of the institute and deputy director of the academic committee. She is also an academician of TWAS Youth Communications of the Academy of Sciences in the Developing National Academy of Sciences.

　　Fu Qiaomei can be said to have inherited the mantra of the Nobel Prize winner's doctoral supervisor, and has made a series of outstanding contributions to the fields of human paleogenomics and paleogenetics. In recent years, the top journal results have been made almost every year. She has been named "China's Top Ten Science Stars" by Nature Magazine, and has also won many honors such as the HHMI International Young Scientist Award, the China Youth Science and Technology Award Special Award, the Science Exploration Award, the UNESCO's first Alfozan Award, the Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal (the first award-winning Chinese scientist), the "National March 8th Red Flag Bearer Model" and the 2024 TWAS-CAS Frontier Science Young Scientist Award (Life Science Field), etc.