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Genomics Institute in Zhejiang Expands to Drive forward Research
A new branch of the Huada Genomics Information Base of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (BGI/CAS) was founded on Saturday at the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province.
The project, a co-operative effort with the world's most famous genomics study centre - WhiteHead in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States - is part of the BGI/CAS in Beijing.
The Zhejiang branch will offer a full set of classes and graduate programmes at Zhejiang University, ranging from the basics to applications of genomics.
Fifty students are the first enthusiastic enrollees.
"It is a great combination that the three (WhiteHead and the two BGI/CAS entities) can work together," said Hangzhou Mayor Qiu Baoxing, who visited WhiteHead in March. "Zhejiang University will be able to provide this programme with some of the best talent in the country. And we are also excited to see that high-level genomics scientists will soon be brought out in our province.
Genomics is the study of the genetic order of organisms.
China joined the international Human Genome Project (HGP) in 1999, a key agency in the effort to decoding mankind's genomics order.
By last month, China had completed its part of mapping 1 per cent of the human genome. Other nations are doing other work in the effort, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan.
"One of the wonderful things about the HGP is that it belongs to the whole world and is done by scientists all over the world," WhiteHead Professor Eric Lander said. "It gives us an opportunity to work, although far away from home, with scientists who are so similar and as devoted as our colleagues back home." Lander praised his Chinese counterparts and the 10th International Strategy Meeting on Human Genome Sequencing in Hangzhou last week.
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