On the morning of December 3, 2024, Prof. ZHOU Qi from Zhejiang University was invited to the Institute of Hydrobiology (IHB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, for an academic exchange. He delivered a lecture titled "Regulation and Evolution of Animal Sex," as part of the 2024 Innovation Lecture Series (27th session).

During the lecture, Professor Zhou explored the intriguing phenomenon of sexual dimorphism in nature, delving into fundamental questions about sex regulation and evolution in animals: How did sex chromosomes originate? How is recombination suppressed after their emergence? And how do heteromorphic sex chromosomes degenerate over time?

He highlighted his team's key discoveries in the field: 1.Using red-eared sliders and softshell turtles as models, they investigated the evolutionary mechanisms behind the transition from temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) to genetic sex determination (GSD).2.Using emus as a model, they explored how sex is determined in birds.3.Leveraging single-cell sequencing in fruit flies, they uncovered the processes and regulatory pathways involved in forming different types of sperm, shedding light on why animals produce diverse sperm types. These findings provide an evolutionary and developmental biology perspective on the mechanisms of sex determination and regulation.

Professor Zhou holds a tenured position at the School of Life Sciences and the Center for Evolutionary Biology at Zhejiang University. He is also affiliated with the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. His research focuses on the regulation and evolutionary mechanisms of animal sex chromosomes.

To date, Professor Zhou has published over 60 papers, including 22 as a corresponding or co-corresponding author in top journals like Science, Nature, Nature sub-journals, and PNAS. His work has been cited over 6,000 times.