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Six years ago, China became the global leader in DNA sequencing — and it was all down to one company, BGI. The Shenzen-based firm had just purchased 128 of the world’s fastest sequencing machines and was said to have more than half the world’s capacity for decoding DNA.
Today, China is being reborn as a sequencing power with a broader base. Fuelling the drive is a multibillion-dollar, 15-year precision-medicine initiative, which China announced in March 2016 and which rivals a similar initiative in the United States. If these efforts fulfil their goals, doctors envision being able to use a person’s genome and physiology to pick the best treatments for his or her disease.
The announcement of the precision-medicine programme sent a ripple of excitement through China’s sequencing giants. The money will be spent on improving technologies, sequencing, and sharing and analysing more than one million human genomes, as well as on developing drugs and diagnostics from the data and using those findings to personalize medical care.
Read full, original post: China’s bid to be a DNA superpower
