NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BGI said today that is has launched the George Church Institute of Regenesis, which plans to focus on synthetic biology technologies and applications, and will collaborate with Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
Church, a longtime advisor to BGI, will be chief scientist of the institute that bears his name, which is co-located with the China National GeneBank in Shenzhen.
BGI said it has "made a strong commitment to support research" directed by Church, both in China and in the US. The plan is to launch a series of projects, starting in January 2018.
The collaboration will initially focus on the development of technologies in high-density DNA storage, biomanufacturing of natural products, and genome editing for medicine.
Xun Xu, director of BGI Research, said in a statement that synthetic biology is a major effort that follows the wide use of genome sequencing. The new collaboration "will bring top resources and talent together to overcome current bottleneck issues and further improve the technology," he said.