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Dumbest Man on Internet Jeers Washington Post Blogger for Correcting Error

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus2/12/2013 12:29:05 pm PST

Applied genetics is a growing industry and I suspect a social force in the near future.

From China:

Inside China’s Genome Factory

When he was 17 years old, Zhao Bowen dropped out of Beijing’s most prestigious high school. Like many restless young people in China, he headed south to Shenzhen, the country’s factory capital, for a job. As a teenage science prodigy, however, he wasn’t bound for an assembly-line floor; instead, he was on his way to the world’s largest production center for DNA data. Now, a few years later, in a retrofitted shoe factory that is the headquarters of BGI-Shenzhen, the 21-year-old is orchestrating an effort to decipher the genetic makeup of some 2,000 people—more than 12 trillion DNA bases in all.

BGI-Shenzhen, once known as the Beijing Genomics Institute, has burst from relative obscurity to become the world’s most prolific sequencer of human, plant, and animal DNA. In 2010, with the aid of a $1.58 billion line of credit from China Development Bank, BGI purchased 128 state-of-the-art DNA sequencing machines for about $500,000 apiece. It now owns 156 sequencers from several manufacturers and accounts for some 10 to 20 percent of all DNA data produced globally. So far, it claims to have completely sequenced some 50,000 human genomes—far more than any other group.

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An impressive “non-profit” for sure. The story goes on in detail about their growth, and how they are eclipsing American companies. To whit:

[…]

BGI’s bid to buy the company, for the fire-sale price of $118 million, has stirred competitive worries in the U.S. The main supplier of DNA sequencing instruments, Illumina, tried to break up the deal with a counter-bid and appealed to Washington to block the takeover. Letting BGI snap up the company would be equivalent to selling China the “formula for Coke,” said Illumina’s CEO, Jay Flatley. Flatley cautioned that the Chinese, until now dependent on U.S. machinery, could dominate next-generation technology—and that they could even somehow make “nefarious” use of American DNA data flowing through their computer servers by the terabyte. U.S. regulators have dismissed the national security concerns, and approval of the deal is pending.

[…]

” [M]ake “nefarious” use of American DNA…” ???

Well, as long as my bodily fluids are not contaminated I’ll be ok.