BGI Group - The Biggest Genomics Company in the World?
BGI Group is a Chinese genome sequencing company, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. BGI Group announced in 2020 that it will make genome sequencing cheaper, breaking the $100 barrier for the first time. The Shenzhen company says the low cost will be possible with an "extreme" DNA sequencing system that is capable of decoding the genomes of 100,000 people a year.
China National Genebank (site)
This is a nonprofit created in 2011 with funding from BGI and the Chinese government. Their mission is to capture and catalog human, plant, and animal species and they claim to have 80% of the finished large genome projects in the world. Capacity for 150m genomes a year.
GeneBank Vision Video - Stranger then any sci-fi movie
A tour to China's national gene bank (1h youtube video)
BGI Founders
Wang Jian (Chinese: 汪建; born 13 April 1954)
Wang Jian is Chairman and co-founder of the BGI Group (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute). He graduated in 1979 from Hunan Medical College and in 1986 graduated with a Master's in Integrated Medicines from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. From 1988 to 1994, he was a research fellow at the University of Texas, the University of Iowa and the University of Washington, working on cell proliferation and differentiation. After returning to China in 1994 to set up Jubilee Biotechnology, this provided much of the initial capital used to set up the Beijing Genomics Institute with Yang Huanming, Liu Siqi and Yu Jun in 1999 in order to engage in research contributing to the Human Genome Project. After this work he was involved in the sequencing of the rice genome, first Asian human reference genome and numerous other large-scale genomics projects. In 2003 he was involved in the efforts to sequence and contain the SARS coronavirus, meeting with Hu Jintao who praised BGI's contribution. In 2007 the Beijing Genomics Institute become just BGI when it was relocated to Shenzhen as "the first citizen-managed, non-profit research institution in China". As the largest shareholder in BGI's holding company, in 2019 his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be US$1.2 billion. In January 2020 he travelled to Wuhan to set up a situation room tackling the COVID-19 disease outbreak, helping coordinate the development of diagnostic tests and a 2000-sq-meter emergency detection laboratory built in 5 days. Devoted to fitness and believing health and longevity to be the first priority of BGI, he has climbed and skied on some of the highest mountains in the world, including summiting Mount Everest.
Yang Huanming (Chinese: 杨焕明; born 6 October 1952)
Yang Huanming is a Chinese biologist and businessman. one of China's leading genetics researchers. He is Chairman and co-founder of the Beijing Genomics Institute, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected as member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007, a foreign academician of Indian National Science Academy in 2009, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and foreign associate of the US National Academy of Science in 2014.
Yang Huanming: Sequencing Technology in Biomedicine
