A Chinese Genome Giant Sets Its Sights on the UItimate Sequencer

THE WORLD'S LARGEST genetics research center isn't at Harvard or Stanford or even the NIH. It's a 20-mile drive from Hong Kong International Airport, in the bustling Chinese city of Shenzhen. BGI (BGI China)---formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute---has sequenced the DNA of organisms big and small: millet, rice, the giant panda, 40 types of silkworm, the SARS virus, even a 4,000-year-old man named Inuk. And soon it will add a new name to its genomic guest book: Dubs, the Alaskan Malamute, and mascot for the University of Washington.

The school's leadership will hand over a vial of husky DNA as a symbol of a new partnership between the Chinese genomics giant and UW, along with a few other US research institutions. BGI announced Wednesday the launch of a West Coast Innovation Center, co-located in Seattle and San Jose. The Seattle hub will focus on precision medicine and feature collaborations with UW, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Washington State University. The San Jose facility, where BGI already has a lab and just over 100 employees, will support its ambitions to develop the next-next-generation sequencing technologies. Technologies that---up until now---have been dominated by US sequencer behemoth Illumina.

“The idea is to promote the partnership between researchers in China and the US,” says Jian Wang, BGI's founder and chairman. “We want to work more closely to provide health care communities in both countries with new tools for preventing and fighting disease.” Some of these initial projects for the Seattle center include hunting down cancer biomarkers and mapping out an atlas of human brain cells. And there is talk of embarking on large-scale population health studies. All of which, most researchers agree, are legitimately exciting prospects for the partnership.