Highlights

With the financial support of the prestigious Albert Einstein Professorship of 
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), South China Sea Institute of Oceanology 
(SCSIO) invited and coordinated world widely known scientist Dr. Julian Davies, 
Emeritus Professor and former head of Department of Microbiology & 
Immunology, University of British Columbia, Canada, visited the SCSIO, Chinese 
Academy of Sciences, and other research institutes of CAS, and some Universities 
in Guangzhou, Yichan, Beijing and Shanghai from July 7 to 22, 2007 to promote 
the academic exchanges and research collaborations. 
At SCSIO in Guangzhou on July 9, 2007, a formal ceremony was hosted by Dr. Xie 
Qiang with a warm welcome from professionals and graduate students interested on 
microbiology. During the occasion, Prof. Liangming Huang, the vice president of 
SCSIO, gave a thoroughly introduction of Prof Davies to the audience full of 
professors, scientists, graduate students, and awarded the certificate of Guest 
(visiting) professorship to Dr. Davies, who happily accepted the honor. Dr. Davies 
expressed that he was very fortunate to have the opportunity to carry out research 
cooperation and academic exchanges thoroughly with scientists at ACS and SCSIO 
now and in the future. 
After the ceremony, Dr. Davies demonstrates his optimistic and energetic voice in 
an excellent presentation entitled “Are antibiotics really antibiotics?” and catches 
everyone’s attention. He elaborated the rich small molecular natural products (SMs) 
produced by microorganism and their potential applications in antibacterial, 
anti-tumor, anti-virus, and other therapeutical treatments. He pointed out that SMs 
of microorganisms existing in abundance in nature mainly serves as agents in 
intercellular signal transductions, although humankind takes advantage of SMs of 
their reproduction superiority in natural competition for space and nutrients. Prof. 
Davies expounded that the biology function of SMs, and the principle, the method 
and the practical application of metagenomics of SMs on the base of 
microbiological interaction. He predicts that, along with widely accumulation of the 
genomic data and rapid development of the multi-targets-based screening 
technology, a rich source of novel active small molecular natural products (SMs) 
would be discovered among previously known as noncultivable microorganisms
such as marine microbial community.
Prof.  Davies also participates in an academic workshop organized by scientists at 
SCSIO,  together with full house of young scientific professionals and graduate
students. He discusses and express views with  SCSIO young scientists Dr.
Yonghong Liu, Dr. Chang Chen, Dr. Shuhua Qi  and Dr. Shumei Jiang on their
research fields, and highly appraised the research  directions and activities of their 
research  work. 
In SCSIO, Prof. Davies also visited the Key Laboratory of Tropic Marine 
Bio-resource Sustainable Development of CAS (LMB) and the Guangdong Key 
Laboratory of Marine Materia Medica, the Marine Organism Museum and the 
“Shiyan 3” Research Ship. Especially, Dr. Davies spent additional time to 
communicate thoroughly with the graduate students, and reviewed his own tricks 
on the environment metagenomic engineering research. He also proposed his
unique opinion on the present of this research domain. He carefully gives on site 
guidance to graduate students, and raises the concrete ideas and the development 
direction. Subsequently, Prof. Davies visited and made presentations at Sun 
Yat-sen University (SYSU) and Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, 
CAS (GIBH).
On July 18, 2007，a formal ceremony was hold at Graduate School of Chinese 
Academy of Sciences in Beijing. On behalf of president of ACS, Prof. Ma, 
Shizhuan, directors of Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, awarded 
the medal and certificate of Albert Einstein Professorship of CAS to Dr. Davies, 
followed with an excellent presentation by Dr. Davies, and an openly discussion 
and communications among professionals and graduate students. Dr. Davies also 
visits and gives various presentations at Institute of Microbiology and Northern 
Genome Center in Beijing, and Southern Genome Center in Shanghai. 
As we known, Prof. Davies is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a 
Leeuwenhoek Lecturer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the 
American Academy of Microbiology, and a Fellow of the European Molecular 
Biology Organization (EMBO). He was elected as the President of the American 
Society for Microbiology in 1999. Dr. Davies’ interests concern various aspects of 
microbial ecology. In particular, he has studied the origins and mechanisms of 
antibiotic resistance in bacteria, with special reference to gene capture and 
horizontal gene transfer. He is also studying the degradation pathways of 
xenobiotics and lignin-derived products by streptomycetes, and studying microbes 
in the environment with special reference to the predominant non-cultivable species. 
He is one of founders and pioneers of metagenomic engineering research. In his 
research work, molecular techniques are being used to isolate genes for antibiotic 
biosynthetic pathways to study their expression in surrogate hosts with the goal of 
isolating novel secondary metabolites for pharmaceutical application.