From undertaking the 1% task of " Human Genome Project " and 10% task of "International Human Haplotype Map", to independently completing the 100% task of "Asian Genome Map", to completing the Asian part of the "International Thousand People Genome Project", and to launch the establishment of the "Spatial-Time Society Alliance" this year, BGI has experienced the transformation and evolution process from participating in the integration, independent synchronization, and then leading and supporting.
Recently, "Shenzhen Oral History" interviewed Wang Jian , the chairman and co-founder of BGI Group, from his personal life to the establishment and development of BGI. The following is compiled based on Wang Jian’s self-report content and has been slightly deleted.
30 years before my life
I was born in a remote small county town in Xiangxi, Hunan Province. When I was a child, my family was well-off. In 1968, I responded to the call of "We also have a pair of hands and don't eat idle food in the city" to go to the countryside to go to the countryside to go to the countryside. During that period, I often couldn't eat enough, so I spent my youth in poverty and hunger. This experience of hunger has had a profound impact on me, so when I grew up, I always believed that physical pain is far more painful than mental pain. After all, eating a full meal and living a healthy and long-term life is the most important thing.
In addition to undergoing major changes in life, my studies were also forced to stop. It was not until the 1970s that I was able to study unfinished studies and graduated from the Department of Medical Sciences of Hunan Medical College (now Xiangya Medical College of Central South University) in 1979. During my ten years of youth, I had no chance to calm down and study hard for various reasons.
Time has come to the end of the 20th century. I really felt that "it is impossible not to study", so I began to study hard, tried my best to get a graduate student, and graduated in 1986 and obtained a master's degree in pathology in the discipline of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine in Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (now Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine ). From 1988 to 1994, I chose to study abroad and worked in postdoctoral research at the University of Texas, University of Iowa, and University of Washington in the United States.
Participate in the Human Genome Project: Get admission tickets to the world's top genetic research circle
During my study abroad, I led the establishment of the Seattle Chinese Biomedical Association. When I realized that the Human Genome Project "has great potential" and that what I learned can contribute to the country, I began to plan to bring the "Human Genome Project" (referred to as "HGP") back to China. So I summoned and persuaded a few of my previous classmates: " Let's move the human genome project back, do 1%. ." In 1994, I returned to China to establish Jibiai Biotechnology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., and actively promoted China to participate in the human genome project.
Genomics in the first 20 years of the 21st century is a very controversial field, but it is also a very meaningful and promising field.
In fact, at that time, should China participate in HGP? What is China's genome research plan? How will Chinese scientists face this new field of development? The answers to these questions are not as good as the experience of previous generations. In November 1997, I was invited to attend the genetics seminar held in Zhangjiajie, Hunan. It was also at this meeting that Yu Jun, Yang Huanming and others jointly proposed the strategic concept of China's HGP, which became the starting point of our common cause.
HGP is the most globalized and human community action plan in the 20th century. It is known as the "three major scientific projects of mankind in the 20th century" together with the Manhattan atomic bomb plan and the Apollo moon landing plan. The budget for project is as high as 3 billion US dollars. It is committed to completing the mapping of human genome map through the sincere cooperation of scientists around the world, thereby helping humans understand themselves, master the laws of birth, old age, sickness and death, and the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
Although the content we are studying is only 1% of the entire plan, there is no funding or endorsement, and no one in China dares to try this grand topic. At that time, the idea of participating in HGP was tantamount to dreaming.
But we don’t think so. Even if we sell the blame, we must do our best to participate in this plan and win China the ticket to the world’s top genetic research circle. In the end, we won the HGP project team announced that the 1% sequencing task of the project will be undertaken by the Chinese scientist team.
On September 9, 1999, in order to represent China in participating in the program, in an old factory in Beijing Airport Development Zone, Beijing BGI Gene Research Center (the predecessor of "BGI Group") was announced. Yu Jun, Yang Huanming and Liu Siqi, who later joined, the four of us became co-founders.
BGI founder took a photo (from left: Wang Jian, Liu Siqi, Yu Jun, Yang Huanming)
On June 26, 2000, through the joint efforts of scientists from the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Germany and China, the human genome work framework map was announced to be drawn.
0 years, with the gradual deepening of human understanding of the "Book of Life", human beings have finally been able to understand birth, old age, sickness and death, and the growth of all things from the most basic structure of life, and to understand the origin of life .
Take humans as an example. It first started with a fertilized egg. The human genome has 3 billion base pairs of . This data volume is huge. We must follow the central rule of life , and start to understand life from the root and from the genes. This is the fundamental reason for the launch of HGP. It brings many changes that have been felt or have not felt, but have not.
Go south to Shenzhen: From participating in the integration to comprehensively leading the space-time and space-based
In 2007, we went south to Shenzhen and founded Shenzhen BGI Gene Research Institute (now "Shenzhen BGI Life Science Research Institute", referred to as "BGI Research Institute") and subsequent scientific research, industry and talent training systems, gradually realizing the seamless connection and integration of "production, education and research".
Technology is the primary productivity. In the past, the Chinese made relatively limited contributions to the history of human science and technology cognition. Now, in Shenzhen, the land of reform and opening up, and technological innovation, we are quickly making up for this deficiency. This is a must for mankind to recognize itself and the world.
Our understanding of life has gone through a long journey from the thinking of basic philosophical thoughts to the formation of basic theories of traditional Chinese medicine, or from the earliest philosophical thoughts to the formation of modern medicine. Renaissance , ideological liberation, anatomy laid the foundation of medicine; the invention of microscope at the end of the 16th century to the discovery of nucleic acid in the 19th century, and the analysis of double helix structure in the 1950s, from the sequencing technology that Mr. Wu Rui first invented, to the Sanger sequencing method, and to the implementation of the human genome project. Over the past few hundred years, our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of diseases, our understanding of birth, old age, sickness, death, and the growth of all things has undergone tremendous development and changes.
What is the origin of life? Where does the spirit come from? Can we answer such a question? Would you like to solve this problem? This is what BGI is doing and the question you want to try to answer.
Reviewing the process of more than 20 years since the drawing of the human genome work framework map, I returned to China to start a business in my forties, leading a young scientific research team, from undertaking the 1% task of the "Human Genome Project" and the 10% task of the "International Human Haplotype Map Project", to independently completing the 100% task of the "Asian Genome Map", to completing the Asian part of the "International Thousand People Genome Project", and in May this year we initiated the establishment of the "Spatial-Time Society Alliance". BGI's development has gone through the transformation and evolution process from participation in alignment, independent synchronization, and support and lead.
Among them, what is particularly important is the development of space-time and space-based technology independently developed by BGI since 2020. "Spatiotemporal and spatial omics" simply means conducting genome, expression profile, and multiomics research on time and space dimensions. This is a new field that has not been explored and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
This year, we have achieved many breakthroughs based on BGI space-time Omics Stereo-seq technology. In May, the official website of Cell Publishing House published the first global panoramic map of life we drew in the form of the "Spatial-Time Society Alliance", for the first time, the gene and cell changes in life development were analyzed in the first time and space dimensions. Among them, the space-time map of mouse embryonic development was published in the journal Cell in the form of a cover article.
Spatial-temporal and spatial-temporal alliance founding ceremony
9, based on this technology, we built the world's first high-resolution salamander brain regeneration space-time map, providing support for cognitive brain structure and development process, and providing a new direction for the regenerative medicine research and treatment of nervous system . This research result was published in the journal Science in the form of a back-to-back cover article.
In the future, we must continue to produce new achievements in this area, form comprehensive and leading development, guided by large scientific projects, large scientific installations, and big data computing, and form a new development model supported by national strength.
was established and operated. my country's first comprehensive national gene bank
was officially approved by the construction of four ministries and commissions including National Development and Reform Commission and other four ministries and commissions. With the support of the Shenzhen Municipal Government, Shenzhen National Gene Bank located in Dapeng New District was officially put into use in September 2016. This is another national-level gene database that has been built after National Biotechnology Information Center, Japanese Gene Database and European Institute of Bioinformatics, and is organized and operated by BGI Research Institute.
is different from other national gene banks, which are just simple databases and have no sample preservation function. Shenzhen National Gene Bank has created a biological information database, biological sample resource library, biological living library, and a digital platform, also known as the "reading" platform. It is worth noting that the biological living library of Shenzhen National Gene Bank is the world's first platform to provide resources for the research and protection of biodiversity , including important species protection and breeding technologies, expanding from aquatic organisms to animals and plants and microorganisms , etc.
injects technological vitality into Shenzhen’s “blessed land”
Since its establishment in 1999, BGI has gone through twenty-three years, and I have also lived in Shenzhen, a “migratory bird city” for more than ten years. During this period, while BGI was injecting technological vitality into the development of the life science industry, it also applied the latest achievements of gene technology to the prevention and control of birth defects, early tumor prevention and control and infection transmission prevention and control by continuously reducing costs, thus benefiting people's livelihood and health.
In the development process of life sciences, young talents are the key. In the long-term development process, BGI has explored an efficient "three developments and three belts" model, namely scientific discovery, technological invention, industrial development, and three development linkage, using projects to lead disciplines, talents, and industries.
We dare to let young people take on important projects and let them experience and grow in projects. is not done because of "proficiency", but "made" so that they become experts. Although many of our important backbone personnel are very young, some are even born in the 1990s, they are already the heads of important strategic projects and have rich experience in organizing and promoting large projects. Together they form a team of talented and high-level talents like BGI.
On the eve of the 2020 Spring Festival, Lord Hua went against Wuhan and became one of the first teams to rush to help Wuhan. The "Fire Eye" laboratory, which undertakes the task of large-scale and engineered nucleic acid testing, came into being. Two and a half years have passed. The "Fire Eye" laboratory, which was born in the ashes, has not only become the "Chinese business card" of science and technology to fight the epidemic, but also helps global epidemic prevention and control. At this moment, "Fire Eye" laboratory is still fighting on the frontline of the plateau's anti-epidemic.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang Jian, who rushed to Wuhan, visited the virus testing laboratory
The old horse is in the stable and has ambitions for thousands of miles.For more than 20 years, we have remained infatuated and firmly believed that genetic technology will benefit mankind, and we will maintain a heart that is uneasy about the status quo, and will always be "young and vigorous". BGI has contributed to the life science industry in China and even the world. In the post-epidemic era, it has adopted a dual-line layout of products and services, bringing Chinese wisdom and Chinese strength to the global solution to public health problems. In the future, we will continue to increase investment in scientific research, cultivate scientific research talents, optimize product and service structure, and help achieve genetic technology to benefit mankind.
*The above content comes from the Shenzhen Evening News, reporter: Chenggong, Zheng Shuyi
