A research team from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) led by Professor Xiang David Li from the Department of Chemistry in collaboration with Dr. Yuanliang Zhai from the HKU School of Biological Sciences and Dr. Jason Wing Hon Wong and Dr. Xiucong Bao from the HKU School of Biomedical Sciences recently made a key breakthrough in understanding how genetic information encoded in our DNA is read and why errors in reading such information can often lead to developmental defects or cancers. The findings were recently published in Science.