At the invitation of Professor Airong Qian of School of Life Sciences, Changqi Zhu, a Professor from the Department of Life Sciences at FerrisState University, gave an academic report which entitled "Relationship between Cell Autophagy Genes and Drosophila Lifespan" in the west hall XA208 meeting room at 9:00 am on June 19th. The report was chaired by Qian Airong. Some teachers, doctoral students and postgraduate students from the School of Life Sciences attended the meeting.

Changqi Zhu introduced the advantages of using fruit flies as a model organism to study cell autophagy, summarized several genes and proteins which were related to cell autophagy, and emphasized their important role in regulating cell autophagy. Changqi Zhu showed the results of his experiments that using the gene Atg as a research target to study the relationships between cell autophagy and lifespan of drosophila. It had been shown that the formation of autophagosomes was significantly increased in the muscle tissue of senescent drosophila, and knocked down Atg in specific tissues can reduced the life span of drosophila. Teachers and students raised their understandings and questions to Changqi Zhu about his research and had a heated discussion on aging mechanism.

After the meeting, Airong Qian introduced the overall situation of the School of Life Sciences and the research work of the research team to Professor Changqi Zhu, and showed him the various laboratories of the School of Life Sciences. Changqi Zhu said he was benefited a lot from this visit and achieved the purpose of academic exchanges. He proposed that he would has a comprehensive cooperation with the School of Life Sciences in teaching and scientific research. (Pictures, Text / Peihong Su; Review / Airong Qian, Yuanyuan Zhao)