I was floored today when the director of BGI told me they would soon reach a sequencing rate of 1000 (human) genomes per day (so, 10^5 to 10^6 genomes per year is right on the horizon).Še nekaj zanimivih detajlov o BGI, ki morda razkrije, zakaj (lahko) sanjajo tako na veliko: Institut se financira iz milijardov in pol dolarjev posojila, ki ga je dala Kitajska razvojna banka. In še odsek iz uvodnika o BGI v Nature:
Rast je fenomenalna:In 2006, Li Yingrui left Peking University for the BGI, China's premier genome-sequencing institute. Now, freckled and fresh-faced at 23 years old, he baulks at the way a senior BGI colleague characterized his college career — saying Li was wasting time playing video games and sleeping during class. "I didn't sleep in lectures," Li says. "I just didn't go."
He runs a team of 130 bioinformaticians, most no older than himself[...]
BGI has been undergoing hypergrowth in the last year, with the number of software developers shooting from 200 to about 1000, and the total staff population nearing 5000.In se ne ustrašijo niti raziskav, ki dregajo v osje gnezdo:
But the organisation is involved in even more controversial projects. It is about to embark on a search for the genetic underpinning of intelligence. Two thousand Chinese schoolchildren will have 2,000 of their protein-coding genes sampled, and the results correlated with their test scores at school.Še nekaj zanimivh postov o BGI na blogu Stevea Hsuja: tu, tu in tu.