Discovering our ancestors

Invasion and contamination by microbial DNA only makes things more challenging. In 2013, Fu led a team to tackle those problems, and codeveloped an advanced ancient nuclear genome capturing technology that can adsorb, separate, enrich and "fish out" human DNA. This is remarkable considering the feat can be achieved with a concentration of merely 0.03 percent of DNA mixed with a large number of microorganisms from the environment.

The technology allowed Fu and her team to "fish out" the nuclear DNA of the Tianyuan men who date back to about 40,000 years ago in Beijing in 2013, and to further acquire its genome sequence in 2017－the first ancient human genome in China and the earliest modern human's genome in East Asia.

Science Magazine rated the genome information as filling a key gap in geology and time concerning East Asia.

While the genetics of ancient humans in Southeast Asia, Siberia, and the Japanese archipelago have been well-studied, little had been known until now about the genetics of ancient humans in China.

Fu and her team turned to investigate the past populations in northern and southern China and cast a spotlight on an important period in East Asia's early history, which marked the transition from hunter-gathering to agricultural economies.

They found that these Neolithic humans share the closest genetic relationship to present-day East Asians. While more divergent ancestries can be found in Southeast Asia and the Japanese archipelago, in the Chinese mainland, Neolithic populations already displayed genetic features belonging to present-day East Asians.

The findings reflected the profound impact that population movement and mixture has had on human history and proved a continuity that extends back 9,500 years.

From a small-town girl, Fu became a leading scientist through continuously opting out of comfortable choices.

In college, she majored in protective technology for cultural relics. But out of a preference for a biologyrelated discipline, she gave up the postgraduate recommendation from her own college, and went on to pass the entrance exams of the CAS to engage in bone research.

Upon completing her master's degree in 2009, she changed her major again. She headed to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany to study for a PhD in ancient human genomics, despite an absence of the relevant background.