Genetics Research in China
A reminder that the genetic revolution is still making its way around the globe.
Yang Huanming is chief scientist of China’s human genome project and the director of Beijing Genomics Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In 1998, he and a few other Chinese scientists applied to be part of the global Human Genome Project.
[Yang] dug out all his personal savings, about US$70,000, and persuaded his colleagues and staff to lend their personal money as well. The centre raised about 4.2 million yuan (US$507,246) from these donations. Meanwhile, Yang obtained several million yuan from CAS president funds, enabling the centre to buy the first batch of sequencers.
In September 1999, the HGP committee decided at a London meeting that China could assume responsibility for one per cent of the total genome sequencing. China was allotted to decipher the chromosomes that make human forearms.
In April 2000, just six months after they started, Chinese scientists finished mapping the draft of the genes for human forearms.
In June 2000, the 16 HGP genome centres in the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, France and China, announced the completion of “the human genome draft.”
It was only due to Yang’s perseverence and willingness to use his own money and resources that China has managed to take a step towards modernizing their biotech industry. The Pan-Asian SNP Initiative is just one of the projects that have begun outside of the established hubs of genomics research. How long will it take other developing countries to take advantage of all that the genetic revolution has to offer?
Xinhua, September 2, 2005
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POSTED IN: General Genetics and Health
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