Los Angeles, California, USA
February 17, 2012

The University of California, Davis, and China-based BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, based in China, signed a master agreement today (Feb. 17) sealing a partnership that will change the landscape of genomic sciences in California and the Western states. The BGI@UC Davis alliance will foster critical breakthroughs in the areas of food security, human, animal and environmental health.

The master agreement was signed today by UC Davis Provost Ralph G. Hexter and Hao Zhang, director of BGI@UC Davis,at a morning ceremony in Los Angeles, with high-ranking dignitaries from China and the United States attending.

"Today marks an exciting new chapter in the collaboration between UC Davis, with our strengths in biology, medicine, food and the environment, and BGI, the world's premier genomics organization," said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi. "The discoveries that flow from this partnership will have a worldwide impact."

Under the agreement, UC Davis faculty and students will gain access to the capabilities and expertise of one of the world's premier genomics and bioinformatics institutes, while BGI researchers will be able to access the university's diverse resources and expertise in education and research, especially in biology, human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, and the environment.

Jian Wang, president of BGI stated, "We look forward to a highly productive relationship with UC Davis, one of the top research universities in the U.S., especially in the areas of agricultural, environmental and biological research. Given UC Davis' expertise in these areas, coupled with BGI's expertise in genome sequencing and bioinformatics, we expect this partnership and the establishment of BGI@UC Davis Joint Genome Center to lead to significant scientific breakthroughs."

In June of 2011, Katehi and Wang signed the initial agreement to establish the BGI@UCDavis partnership during a meeting in Shenzhen, one of China's Special Economic Zones.

This was followed by a second agreement signed in October 2011 that established an interim BGI facility for immediate use at the UC Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento and initiated planning for a permanent BGI@UC Davis facility. That signing ceremony, held in Sacramento for this second agreement was attended by both Qin Xu, the mayor of Shenzhen, and Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento.

Under the October 2011 agreement, BGI has moved three state-of-the-art DNA sequencing machines into the interim facility on the UC Davis Sacramento campus. When complete, the facility will accommodate ten such machines, dramatically increasing the DNA sequencing capacity readily available to campus researchers.

The partnership between BGI and UC Davis will provide new opportunities for researchers at both institutions, said Harris Lewin, vice chancellor for research at UC Davis. It will enable them to tackle bigger and more complex problems and assemble teams that can compete for bigger grants. It will also act as a catalyst to bring new companies and businesses to Sacramento, Lewin said.

The BGI@UCDavis facility will partner with the existing UC Davis Genome Center, located in the Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility on the UC Davis campus in the further development of genomics at UC Davis. Since it opened in 2004, the Genome Center has recruited more than 15 faculty, building expertise in genomics and bioinformatics and developed five technology cores that serve faculty from campus and elsewhere. The new BGI@UCDavis facility will dramatically increase the capacity for sequencing at UC Davis.

Genomics is a discipline of biology concerning the study of the genome, or all the genes of an organism. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the genomes of plants, animals, microbes and other living things, as a way to better understand how they grow, develop and function. Since the first human genome was completed in 2001, the genomes of many other plants and animals have been sequenced, including lab animals and plants, crops such as rice, and disease-causing microbes.
 

Website: http://www.ucdavis.edu

Published: February 17, 2012