The human genome research in China has already been up with considerable technological and talented professionals. A complete set of tactics and technologies obtained in the human genome plan (HGP) has made it a shining industry in the 21st century.
A strong capability for genome sequencing and information analysis would lay an important basis for China to protect, exploit and make use of its gene resources, a life science marked with China's features and intellectual property rights.
According to Yang Huanming, head of Human Genetics Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China has, by participating in the HGP, shared with other countries the advanced information, resources and techniques obtained during the past 10 years. So far a complete set of gene sequencing technology has been set up, thereby laying a foundation for a further study on the gene sequencing of the biological resources in China.
China is the last to join the plan, but it has traversed what took Germany, France and other countries eight years to accomplish. China's genome sequencing capacity has surpassed that of France and Germany, taking the fourth place in the world. China has 44 sets of advanced gene sequencing machines, with its current strength jumping to the seventh out of the world 16 human genome research centers. The giant computer soon to be installed, with per second operation speed exceeding 100 billion times, will tally China the first-rate country in human genome research of the world. The days in which the fundamentals of China's life science and biological industry is rocked and swayed by the aliens will be gone forever.
On the basis of the large-scale human genome sequencing, Yang Huanming and other scientists have been carrying out a splendid genome plan for biological resources with more Chinese characteristics. Starting from the cooperation with Yuan Longping, a scientist on the super-hybrid rice genome plan to the pig genome plan coordinated with a Denmark scientist and from the biological information study collaborated with the circle of computer sciences to the genome polymorphism research technology, the gene expressing technology and the immunity genome research platform, Chinese scientists are forging step by step ahead for a cross-science and transnational cooperation in scientific research.
(People's Daily 09/25/2000)
