A genome-wide project to be launched in China

Almaty. January 8. Silkroadnews - A genome atlas of the country’s population will be created in China, the newspaper “People’s Daily” reports.
“Chinese authorities launched a four-year genome-wide project, which will map out Chinese people’s genome atlas by sequencing the genes of 100,000 individuals, in an effort to identify genetic basis of health disorders of Chinese,” the report said.
“This is China’s first domestically designed genome-wide project, which is also the world’s largest. We will choose 100,000 Chinese individuals as our research subjects to map Chinese people’s genome variation. With a sequencing accuracy of 0.001, we can collect and analyze the genome data of Chinese people, in an effort to further promote the country’s medical and health work,” the agency quoted Wang Yadong, the project’s chief director, saying.
According to Wang, the project will be divided into three stages, during which a map of the genome and a health atlas of 10,000, 60,000 and 100,000 Chinese people, respectively, will be compiled. Wang also noted, for security reasons confidentiality and retention of data and information will be provided in compliance with the laws.
It took more than a decade and $2.7 billion to make the first transcript of the human genome, completed by the Human Genome Project in 2003. Since then, different countries and scientific institutions have made great efforts to explore the secrets of human genes, hoping to crack the cancer code.
China has made remarkable achievements in the field of genetic research in recent years. In October 2017 authorities in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, announced that they would sequence the genes of 1 million people’s genes to create a genetic database of the Chinese residents.