NEW YORK – BGI of China and SpaceTime Ventures of Brazil said today that they have formed a strategic partnership in the area of tropical genomics.
Under the collaboration, the partners plan to design, construct, and showcase the Earth Bank of Codes platform for biodiversity genomic data using BGI's 10KP, an effort that is affiliated with the Earth BioGenome Project, as a test case.
In addition, they plan to establish a large-scale tropical plant genomics R&D center and associated sequencing and bioinformatics infrastructure, in partnership with leading tropical agriculture and agronomic R&D centers in South America.
Finally, they plan to collaborate with SpaceTime Ventures' Pivotal Genomics startup to develop a biocomputational platform that focuses on systems-level change in agriculture and a number of industries using biological assets from nature.
"Our partnership with genomics powerhouse BGI Group will pave the way to establish the key interlocking innovation building blocks in the journey to write and make sense of the Book of Life for the benefit of all starting in the tropics," said Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, chairman of SpaceTime Ventures, in a statement.
BGI Group CEO Xun Xu added in a statement that the partnership "will provide a strong foundation to support the tropical genomics research required to accelerate the translation of genomics to valuable assets of a future bioeconomy through implementing the Earth Bank of Codes."
Financial and other details of the partnership were not disclosed.