In 2016, academician Lina Zhang applied for and was approved a key international(regional)  cooperation project "Marine Biomass Macromolecules’ Characterization of Chain Structure and Construction of Functional Material(Grant No.21620102004)" with a total fund of 200 million RMB, together with University of Alberta, Guangzhou General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Area and Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics.

This program intended to solve out the problem that chitin and ascidian cellulose as the main offals of marine products processing are too insoluble to be processed into useful functional materials. Based on their important bioactivity, various functional groups and biodegradability of those wasted biomacromolecules, it emphatically studies on how to convert them into high value-added functional materials via a green pathway.

What’s more, the program will also focus on establishing new methods to resolve cellulose, chitin and protein effectively and calculate the intra-molecular and intermolecular interaction force. Furthermore, it will instruct the split of biological macromolecular chains, determine the molecular chain structure, theorize dilute solution of marine biomacromolecules and create new methods to characterize the chain conformation. (Translated by Fangzhou Zhao from the Translation Group of CCMS)