【11.04.24 新闻周刊】中国在改写基因研究的历史
【中文标题】中国在改写基因研究的历史【原文标题】High-Quality DNA: China is rewriting the book on genome research
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文作者】Lone Frank
【原文链接】http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/24/high-quality-dna.html
中国年轻的科学家们在这个国家一个似乎不可能存在的角落中改写基因研究的历史。
实验室技术人员在位于深圳的北京基因组研究所。左上开始顺时针：罗志伟、李琬玲、张子隆、徐玉珠。
世界上最大的基因图谱研究机构位于中国一个似乎不大可能的角落里。深圳市盐田区一片尘土飞扬的楼群中，周围是卡车修理厂和散养家禽的废弃院落，北京一项雄心勃勃的生物医药研究项目就坐落在一个制鞋车间改造后的厂房中。
但是，朴素的灰色外表下的是内部艺术级的研究设施。在类似特护病房般的房间里，一尘不染的玻璃幕墙和氖灯笼罩着一排排发出嗡嗡声音的机器。Illumina Hiseq 2000是世界顶级的基因测序仪，价值50万美元。这里有128台这样的机器，同时还有数排同类高科技设备。北京基因组研究所（BGI）因此研究出的高质量DNA序列数据，要比美国所有学术机构加在一起还要多。
墙上的一张海报写着“基因造就未来”，中国毫无疑问在着眼这个未来。今年，福布斯杂志预测基因研究市场在未来十年将达到1000亿美元的规模。科学家们分析庞大的基因数据，试图找到对抗疾病的新方法、为世界供应更多的粮食、将微生物应用在工业生产中。哈佛遗传学家George Church这样告诫BGI和美国基因公司：“基因研究目前的状态就和早期的互联网形势一样，谁也不知道它是否会受到热捧。”微软、谷歌、IBM和英特尔等公司纷纷投资基因研究，认为这是自身业务——数据处理——的某种延伸。BGI的创始人和研究负责人杨焕明博士说：“人们已经贸然醒悟，生物学其实就是信息科学。如果我们接受基因组学是建立在数字化生命的基础上这一理念，那么几乎所有的基因数据都具有潜在的价值。”
BGI的发展道路并非一帆风顺，甚至出现过生存危机。中国同事把杨焕明和汪建这两个创始人称作是“疯子”。他们曾经拒绝接受政府的支持，凭自身力量参与国际人类基因项目中，绘制出著名的第一例百分之一完整排序图谱。然后又独自进入水稻基因研究领域，击败了财大气粗的国际大集团，从此获得了政治影响力。杨和汪用这笔钱成立了研究中心，名义上是非赢利组织，但也在从事商业行为，以补贴研究费用。2007年，当地政府以每年资助300万美元为条件，吸引他们在制鞋厂里落户。BGI早期发展相对平缓，靠从事基因排序工作和为医院进行分子诊断测试来获取收入。2009年，他们从中国发展银行获得了15亿美元贷款，公司终于有机会进入一个崭新的领域。他们将基因排序与先进的DNA数据处理解决方案相结合，并应用于制药行业，所取得的成果已经引起了国际关注。去年，制药行业巨头默克宣布了与BGI合作的研究计划，其中国公司的收入已经达到1.5亿美元——这个数字在今年将翻三倍。俄勒冈大学的物理学家Steven Hsu说：“我十分欣赏他们的激情和敢于承担风险的勇气，这种精神影响了整个组织。”
另外一些人希望通过更加深入的科学研究来缓和野心勃勃的产业抱负。与哥本哈根大学长期合作的Oluf Borbye Pedersen说：“需要采取更加理性、冷静的方式来从事基因研究，而不要只关注技术层面的进展，这样才会有更伟大的发现。”
其它知名的基因研究中心倾向于单纯关注人类健康，比如波士顿Broad Institute，但深圳科学家们的研究涵盖了广泛的生物学领域。在一间闪闪发光的实验室中，科学家在扫描数千种微生物，以获取有可能帮助工业生产的基因数据。另一间实验室中开发出的人类干细胞已经在临床中得到应用。科学家们已经绘制出的基因图谱包括黄瓜、40种蚕类和大熊猫等等，收集了生活在人体内部细菌的数万条基因信息。他们还拼接出一个古人类——4500年前生活在格陵兰的古爱斯基摩人的完整基因链条。这些辉煌的学术成果都已准备在学术刊物上连续发表，现实世界中的试验活动也已经在附近的农场里开展，以克隆猪作为疾病测试样本。在老挝，科学家们在试验基因技术种植的各类植物，以解决中国人口膨胀带来的粮食问题。这个研究机构已经积累了大约250项回报丰厚的专利技术，包括农业、工业和医疗领域。
一些卫星研究中心在美国、欧洲、香港和中国其它4个城市已经成立或正在筹建，深圳总部的研究员数量在过去一年半里增长了一倍。目前这个研究所的科学家和技术人员数量几乎达到了4000人，而且还在继续增长。
23岁的生物信息研究员罗润邦说：“我亲眼看到了研究所的成长，但还是不能相信我们竟然发展得这么快。”他是这家公司的核心年龄层人员，这里员工的平均年龄是26岁。
24岁的李英睿掌管生物信息部门和部门内1500名计算机科学家。他在念大学期间中途辍学，因为学校无法给他更多的挑战，他坚定地认为要用更大的自由度和责任感来激励年轻员工。他说：“让他们与工作一起成长，他们会发展得更快。”他手下一名研究员是18岁的赵博文。当赵还是个高中生的时候，在一次暑假活动中加入到生物信息团队，他出色的问题解决能力让所有人折服。在咨询了父母的意见之后，他接受了一份研究员的全职工作，并且用业余时间读完了高中。他目前名副其实地在领导一个有关高智商基因的研究项目。他的团队抽取了1000名智商超过145的成年中国人基因样本，与同样数量随机抽取的其它人基因样本做比对。赵承认与智商有关的基因研究项目存在一些争议，但他说：“这种争议在国内没有那么激烈。”他还说，有几家美国研究组织与他取得了联系，希望双方可以合作，“所有人都对智商问题感兴趣。”
一家制鞋厂变成了一个基因研究中心，科学家取代了蓝领工人——深圳的科研机构代表了这个国家的发展经济和社会的雄心壮志。据波士顿一家管理咨询公司Monitor集团在2010年的一份报告所说，中国“在下一个十年中将在生命科学发展和创新领域位居世界首位。”
从2009年到明年为止，中国政府投资修建医院和健康中心的费用将达到1240亿美元，这种战略投资把大批中国科学家吸引回国。到目前为止，至少有8万名在西方取得博士学位的中国人已经回国，其中绝大部分都是在过去5年中回归的。这个国家在明年将成为世界第二大医药品市场，而美国则被远远落在后面——政府对基础科研投资力度薄弱、投资金额不断下降、私人机构与公共机构的合作矛盾重重。中国必将领先。就像Monitor集团亚洲副总裁George Baeder所说，中国“将为世界建立起一个更有效的新药开发榜样”。这样的预测得到了宾夕法尼亚州立大学社会政策教授Caroline Wagner的响应。她在一份即将发表的论文中说，美国领导世界的时代即将结束，“顶多再过半个世纪，美国只能算作是众多实力派其中之一了。”
但是，Wagner又说：“科学并非是一个零和游戏，”盘子越大，合作的机会越多。杨站在自己的立场上用更直接的方式说：“基因学是国际性的，我们必须要进行合作才能生存和发展。”当然了，他的深圳总部中的科学家们对世界有自己的看法。刚送来一个高科技玩具箱子就放在地板上，还没有打开，箱子侧面的封条上印着：美国制造。
原文：
In an improbable corner of China, young scientists are rewriting the book on genome research.
Lab technicians at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, China. Clockwise from upper left: Zhi Wei Luo; Wan Ling Li; Zi Long Zhang; and Yu Zhu Xu.
The world’s largest genome-mapping facility is in an unlikely corner of China. Hidden away in a gritty neighborhood in Shenzhen’s Yantian district, surrounded by truck-repair shops and scrap yards prowled by chickens, Beijing’s most ambitious biomedical project is housed in a former shoe factory.
But the modest gray exterior belies the state-of-the-art research inside. In immaculate, glass-walled and neon-lit rooms resembling intensive care units, rows of identical machines emit a busy hum. The Illumina HiSeq 2000 is a top-of-the-line genome-sequencing machine that carries a price tag of $500,000. There are 128 of them here, flanked by rows of similar high-tech equipment, making it possible for the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) to churn out more high quality DNA-sequence data than all U.S. academic facilities put together.
“Genes build the future,” announces a poster on the wall, and there is no doubt that China has set its eye on that future. This year, Forbes magazine estimated that the genomics market will reach $100 billion over the next decade, with scientists analyzing vast quantities of data to offer new ways to fight disease, feed the world, and harness microbes for industrial purposes. “The situation in genomics resembles the early days of the Internet,” says Harvard geneticist George Church, who advises BGI and a number of American genomics companies. “No one knows what will turn out to be the killer apps.” Companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Intel have already invested in genomics, seeing the field as an extension of their own businesses—data handling and management. “The big realization is that biology has become an information science,” says Dr. Yang Huanming, cofounder and president of BGI. “If we accept that builds on the digitalization of life, then all kinds of genetic information potentially holds value.”
BGI didn’t always seem destined for success—or even survival. “The crazy guys” was how Chinese colleagues initially referred to the two founders, Huanming and director Wang Jian. Refused government support, they muscled their way into the international Human Genome Project, mapping out 1 percent of that celebrated first full sequence before tackling the rice-plant genome on their own, beating a well-funded international consortium, and suddenly finding political leverage. Yang and Wang used it to set up the research center, which is nominally nonprofit but carries out commercial activities in support of the research. With an annual grant of $3 million from the local government in exchange for moving to the shoe factory in 2007, BGI first grew modestly, generating income from fee-for-service sequencing and conducting molecular diagnostic tests for hospitals. A $1.5 billion loan from the Chinese Development Bank in 2009 allowed the company to catapult into a different league, and its combination of sequencing power and advanced DNA data-management solutions for the pharma industry are now drawing international attention. Last year, pharmaceutical giant Merck announced plans for a research collaboration with BGI, as the Chinese company’s revenue hit $150 million—revenue projected to triple this year. “I admire their passion and the willingness to take risks,” says Steven Hsu, a physicist at the University of Oregon, adding that “it permeates the organization.”
Others would like to see deeper scientific reflection tempering the monumental ambition. “A more philosophical and conceptual rather than just a technical approach to the genome is needed to foster great discovery,” says long-time collaborator Oluf Borbye Pedersen of the University of Copenhagen.
While other well-known genomics centers such as Boston’s Broad Institute concentrate more narrowly on human health, the Shenzhen scientists cover a broad biological spectrum. In one shiny lab, thousands of microbes are being scanned for genes that might serve useful industrial purposes, while in another human stem cells are being developed for clinical applications. Scientists have mapped the genomes of everything from cucumbers and 40 different strains of silk worms to the giant panda. They have also cataloged tens of thousands of genes of bacteria living in the human gut, and pieced together the genomic puzzle of an ancient human—an extinct paleo-Eskimo who lived in Greenland 4,500 years ago. While such academic prestige projects are geared toward publication in scientific journals, real-world experimentation is going on at a nearby farm where pigs are cloned to serve as disease models. And in Laos, scientists are testing genetically enhanced plants to feed China’s growing population. The institute has already amassed almost 250 potentially lucrative patents covering agricultural, industrial, and medical applications.
Satellite research centers have been set up or are underway in the U.S., Europe, Hong Kong, and four other locations in China, and the number of researchers at the main headquarters in Shenzhen has more than doubled during the past year and a half. The institute now employs almost 4,000 scientists and technicians—and is still expanding.
“I’ve seen it happen but sometimes even I can’t believe how fast we are moving,” says Luo Ruibang, a bioinformaticist, who at 23, fits perfectly within the company’s core demographic. The average age of the research staff is 26.
Li Yingrui, 24, directs the bioinformatics department and its 1,500 computer scientists. Having dropped out of college because it didn’t present enough of an intellectual challenge, he firmly believes in motivating young employees with wide-ranging freedom and responsibility. “They grow with the task and develop faster,” he says. One of his researchers is 18-year-old Zhao Bowen. While still in high school, Zhao joined the bioinformatics team for a summer project and blew everyone away with his problem-solving skills. After consulting with his parents, he took a full-time job as a researcher and finished school during his downtime. Fittingly, he now manages a project on the genetic basis of high IQ. His team is sampling 1,000 Chinese adults with an IQ higher than 145, comparing their genomes with those of an equal number of randomly picked control subjects. Zhao acknowledges that such projects linking intelligence with genes may be controversial but “more so elsewhere than in China,” he says, adding that several U.S. research groups have contacted him for collaboration. “Everybody is interested in intelligence,” he says.
A shoe factory becoming a genomics center, scientists replacing blue-collar workers—the Shenzhen research facility embodies the country’s economic and social ambitions. According to a 2010 report from Monitor Group, a management consulting firm based in Boston, China is “poised to become the global leader in life-science discovery and innovation within the next decade.”
The Chinese government will, by next year, have spent $124 billion since 2009 building hospitals and health-care centers. Such strategic investments have lured Chinese scientists back to China. So far, at least 80,000 Western-trained Ph.D.s have returned, the vast majority in the past five years. With the country on track to become the second-largest pharmaceuticals market next year, and the U.S. failing behind, afflicted by weak—and declining—government funding of basic science as well as anemic collaboration between private and public sectors, China could take the lead. As George Baeder, vice president of Monitor Group Asia, says, China “has the potential to create a more efficient model for discovering and developing new drugs,” a prediction echoed by Caroline Wagner, a science-policy specialist and professor at Pennsylvania State University, who argues in a forthcoming paper that the days of American leadership will soon be gone. “After more than half a century at the top spot, the U.S. will become one big player among several,” she says.
But, Wagner adds, “science is not a zero-sum game,” and as the pie gets bigger, so will the opportunities for collaboration. Yang, for his part, puts it simply: “Genomics is international,” he says. “We must collaborate to survive and develop.” Certainly, the scientists at his Shenzhen headquarters have their view on the world. The latest shipment of high-tech toys sits, still unpacked, on the floor; the stamp on the sides of the crates proclaiming: Made in the USA. 本帖最后由 lyycc 于 2011-6-10 16:11 编辑
沙发哦
“位于深圳的北京基因组研究所”
呵呵，怎么读起来这么别扭~
不看不知道，中国的基因科技这么牛X么？ 楼主辛苦了。 全文的真实性值得怀疑 研究技术没问题。
不要用中国人做小白鼠，希望你们的产品用你们的基因技术，产生不同于原产品的外形，让喜欢你们高科技产品的人能方便的分辩出你们的奇迹作品。 一边说拒绝政府资助，一边又说接受当地政府和中国发展银行的资金支持？
看来这篇报道不是在说谎，就是再离间。 这个说的应该是华大基因吧。 现在搞这玩意儿基本就是高科技民工，有资本投入，有设备保障，其他就是民工的活儿。当然，这活儿的商业价值是很不错的，但对创造力没啥要求 这是好事啊！政府应该加大基础研究投入力度！
完全支持何作庥院士的主张，全面开展克隆技术研究，包括医疗性克隆和生殖性克隆！ 顶，我就是顶住你不放了，咋滴吧。 suoyin6.owgou.com
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fx13.fsebs.com 这是好事啊！政府应该加大基础研究投入力度！
完全支持何作庥院士的主张，全面开展克隆技术研究，包括医疗 ...
acaijl 发表于 2011-6-11 21:31 http://bbs.m4.cn/images/common/back.gif
罗、李、张、徐四位加油！ 要用开放的心态对待科学。。 很好。基因研究可不是中科院的专利。他们有更多的机会开展自己想做的研究，而不仅仅是做那些为国争光却不能应用到实际领域的研究。 吹捧中国的 :victory:Q44) 好多年前的文章哇 国外人才回来创业，某些方面比国内国有科研组织更有效率。
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