China's National Gene Bank officially operates as the world's largest gene bank (II)
After five years of construction, China's first national gene bank was officially opened on September 22.
It is the fourth national gene bank to be built in the world, after the United States, Japan and the European Union, and by far the largest in the world.
Relying on biological resources, the national gene bank will form a full-coverage model covering resources, scientific research and industry, with applications in areas such as human health, new agriculture, species diversity and environmental protection. In the future, the national gene bank will also open samples and data resources in accordance with relevant rules and become a public service platform, playing an important role in gene sequencing and gene breeding.
The national gene bank is by far the largest in the world
The National Gene Bank is located at the foot of Guanyin Mountain in Dapeng New District, Shenzhen, covering an area of more than 50,000 square meters, with a total construction area of 116,000 square meters. Among them, the first phase covers an area of 47,500 square meters. In 2011, the gene bank was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Health and Family Planning Commission, with BGI ultimately in charge of construction and operation.
Mei Yonghong, director of Shenzhen National Gene Bank, chairman and president of BDA Agriculture Group, said to the media that the selection of Shenzhen National Gene Bank is mainly based on three factors: first, it is convenient to use the large amount of cold energy generated in the gasification process of the nearby LNG(liquefied natural gas) terminal for sample cooling, energy saving and environmental protection; Second, the main building of the national gene bank is built against the natural slope of the mountain, and each floor is equivalent to the first floor, which is supported by the mountain structure. It is stable and can be placed with large equipment. Third, Shenzhen is fully promoting the "eastward strategy". It will plan and build an international biological valley on the Dapeng Peninsula in the east of Shenzhen and build it into an international leading biotechnology innovation center. The national gene bank is an important industrial infrastructure in Dapeng New Area, which will help the biological industry improve its innovation ability.
According to the official website, the Shenzhen National Gene Bank has initially completed the structure and functions of "three databases and two platforms". The "three databases" consist of biological resource sample database, biological information database and living biological database, and the "two platforms" are the digitization platform, synthesis and editing platform. National gene bank set up the basis of the genetic resources mining support and public service platform, to have the huge amounts of biological resources to save, read, understand, write, with ability as the foundation, to build up the detection, management, authentication, basic application system, and promote health of genomics in precision, precision agriculture, ocean development and applications of microbial frontier exploration and industry transformation, New technologies, new products and new models.
The Shenzhen National Gene Bank is the fourth national gene bank in the world after the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information of the United States), EMBL-EBI (European Institute for Bioinformatics), and DDBJ (Japanese DNA Database), but it has its own unique features with the other three databases. National gene bank, executive director of bgi, dean xu told CCTV news in an interview, and the other three big national database to save data as the main function is different, the shenzhen national database is not only the digital platform is accumulated data, others can also save the sample, etc., is a comprehensive database. Shenzhen National Database not only generates data continuously, but also pays more attention to the research, development and utilization of data for industrial development. In the future, the national gene bank will also open samples and data resources in accordance with relevant rules and become a public service platform.
At the same time, the Shenzhen National Gene Bank also conducts data exchange and resource sharing with internationally renowned databases and samples such as NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information of the United States), EMBL-EBI (European Institute of Bioinformatics), and DDBJ (Japanese DNA Database). It has formed a global alliance system with the Doomsday Seed Bank, the University of Heidelberg in Germany and Smithsonian Institute in the United States.
