Human activities in the broad area of sci-tech research have continued despite the still rampant global COVID-19 pandemic. In the past 2021, significant progress was made in bioscience and many related disciplines. This review highlights a few breakthroughs that directly addressed both immediate and long term needs of humans in facing those contingent and constant challenges. Specifically, we briefly present to the reader the progress made in the fields of theoretical and practical structure biology, chemical biology, COVID-19 antibody development, application of gene editing techniques, drug treatment for human mental disorders and development in imaging techniques. 2021 will be remembered for those Chinese scientists who made their particular contributions to the frontier research.

bioscience  /  COVID-19  /  structural biology  /  synthetic biology  /  neuroscience