Health biotechnology in China--reawakening of a giant.

Abstract

showcased its capability in genomics and its intent to become one of the world’s leading contributors to the field of biotechnology. The country quickly set up major institutions in genomics, the Beijing Genomics Institute and the Chinese National Human Genome Center (with branches in Beijing and Shanghai), equipped with state of the art sequencing facilities and computers. Even though they entered the project relatively late, Chinese researchers successfully sequenced 1% of the human genome with an accuracy rate of 99%. They have continued to demonstrate their strength in the field, and in 2002 sequenced the rice genome of the most widely cultivated subspecies in China 1 . The country’s participation in the Human Genome Project is indicative of how rapidly China has reached world standards in sequencing, and this in turn reflects its general advanced state of development in health biotechnology. Since China initiated research in the field in the late 1980s, it has approved several vaccines and diagnostics and thera