Zixin Deng was born in Hubei, China. He received his BSc in microbiology from Huazhong Agricultural University in 1982. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor David A. Hopwood FRS and Dr Tobias Kieser (at the John Innes Center and the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) on the genetics of Streptomyces. He returned to Huazhong Agricultural University in June, 1988 to start a lectureship (1988 –1991), and has been appointed as a professor since 1992. He moved to Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2000 to begin as a professor and a vice-director at the Bio-X Life Science Research Center, and now acts as the head of the key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism under the Chinese Ministry of Education. As Professor of Microbial Genetics and Head of the Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism under the Chinese Ministry of Education, Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Member the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, Professor Deng’s .

 research interests involve studies on microbial metabolic pathways, pathway engineering related to natural product discovery, cell metabolism and molecular microbiology and Streptomyces genetics