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CNGB-Shenzhen,
NMNH announce biorepository agreement
01-17-2013
EDIT CONNECT
SHARING OPTIONS:
PHILADELPHIA—China National Genebank Shenzhen
(CNGB-Shenzhen) and the National Museum of Natural History have made a joint
announcement regarding
a new strategic agreement. Under the arrangement, the
two organizations will promote biorepository and genomics research in addition
to bolstering the
mutual exchanges of experience in resource collection and
sharing, infrastructure construction and information management.
Per the terms of the agreement, CNGB-Shenzhen and the
National Museum of Natural History will, in addition to their
work with the
biorespository, also conduct scientific collaborations for establishing
laboratory and data standards, data management and professional
training and
education. CNGB-Shenzhen will be responsible for providing high-throughput
digitalization and informatics analysis as well as management
for advancing
applications. No financial details were disclosed.
"It provides an unprecedented
collaborative opportunity for
NMNH and CNGB-Shenzhen to accelerate their growth, execute their global
partnering strategy and support biodiversity
research and development efforts,"
Yong Zhang, director of CNGB-Shenzhen, said in a press release. "Combining two
organizations' world-leading
expertise and extensive research experience in these
fields, I believe we could seek more innovative solutions to better face the
challenges of
medical, environmental, energy, security, biodiversity protection
and agricultural problems."
The
National Museum of Natural History boasts several
collections that total over 126 million specimens of animals, plants, fossils,
rocks, minerals,
meteorites and human cultural artifacts. The organization
traditionally supports research through its collections. Since its
establishment in 2011,
CNGB-Shenzhen, which was developed based on
BGI-Shenzhen's technology platforms and computational infrastructure to analyze
and store the
organizations omics data, has collected more than a million
biological samples, including tissues, blood, cells and other bodily fluids.
One facet of the strategic agreement is the Biological
Resource Bank that CNGB-Shenzhen has established. The
Biological Resource Bank
is an information database and network for use both domestically and globally,
providing significant support for omics-related
scientific research as well as
applications to promote the undertaking's dual goals of biodiversity protection
and sustainable development.
"The Global Genome Initiative is a Smithsonian-led effort to
preserve the genomic diversity of life on Earth.
As part of this program, NMNH
is extremely pleased to partner with the China National Gene Bank (Shenzhen) to
preserve and study comprehensive samples
of Earth's genomic diversity," Dr.
Jonathan Coddington, associate director of Research and Collections at NMNH, said
in a statement. "Together we
intend to support biodiversity genome science, to
advance dramatically collection-based bioinformatics, to build the virtual,
global biorepository and
to train the next generation of genomic scientists. We
believe synoptic collections of genome quality samples will be essential
science infrastructure
to address pressing human needs."
The Global Genome Initiative is "a collaborative effort to
create a solid foundation for genomic research through a global network of
biorepositories and research organizations," according to the Smithsonian
Institute's website. The initiative's goals are to collect and barcode a
"synoptic sample" of the planet's genomic diversity, increase
computational
support and technological capacity for sequencing genomes, train the next
generation of genomics researchers in biodiversity science and
cryo-preserve 50
percent of the diversity of life in the next five years and make those
collections available for research.
SOURCE: BGI Americas press release
Code: E01171301 Back |
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