“Gene-edited baby” researcher HE Jiankui sentenced to prison
HE Jiankui, former associate professor with the Southern University of Science and Technology, was convicted of illegal medical practice in a first-instance trial held in a district court in south China’s Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province. He was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 3 million yuan (about 430,000 U.S. dollars) for illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction, in which three genetically edited babies were born.
To other researchers involved in this experiment, ZHANG Renli and QIN Jinzhou, received jail terms of two years and 18 months with a two-year reprieve, as well as fines.
Xinhua news release, December 30, 2019
Nanjing Jiangbei New Area hosts Asia’s largest gene sequencing center
Financed by the Nanjing Yangtze Group with an investment of over 6 billion Yuan, the center offers a genome sequencing capacity of up to 500,000 people per year. A data storage center already completed will be able to store health and medical records of 80 million...
CAS QIBEBT team develops rechargeable Zn and Mg batteries for low-speed electric vehicles
The group of CHEN Liquan at Qingdao Industrial Energy Storage Research Institute (QIESRI), a division of CAS QIBEBT, has discovered that highly concentrated aqueous electrolytes can optimize the Zn stripping/deposition processes and have proposed a smart...
CAS QIBEBT launches Qingdao Carbon Data and Carbon Assessment Engineering Laboratory (QCEL)
QCEL aims at acquiring and evaluating local carbon emission data, studying and establishing methods, tools and modeling, and proposing practical proposals for a low-carbon strategy of Qingdao. This municipal carbon data/assessment engineering lab will address...
CAS Beijing Institute of Genomics releases Genome Variation Map, providing 4.9 billion variants for 19 species
The species cover chicken, dog, goat, human, poplar, rice and tomato and incorporate 8,669 individual genotypes and 13,262 manually curated high-quality genotype-to-phenotype associations for non-human species. GVM serves as an important resource for archiving genomic...
CAS DICP team finds novel biomarkers for early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)
XU Guowang of CAS Dalian Instiute of Chemical Physics’ Institute of Biotechnology has found a new biomarker pattern consisting of phenylalanyl-tryptophan and glycocholate with a higher diagnostic performance than α-fetoprotein (AFP), which is the traditional biomarker...
CAE Institute of Engineering launches cargo unmanned aircraft in Shaanxi
Starting and landing at Pucheng International Airport, the AT200 UAV aircraft completed its 26 min maiden flight on Oct. 26. The aircraft is equipped with Canadian Pratt & Whitney's 750-horsepower PT6A turboprop engines and an advanced flight control and command...
China’s largest biobank opens in Shanghai
The Zhangjiang Biobank has a storage capacity for 10 million samples of tissue, cells, organs, blood samples and other. It will also store 500,000 tumor tissue samples presently held in Shanghai’s National Engineering Research Center. The Zhangjiang Biobank will also...
Kang Biotech Co. and Danisco to cooperate on probiotics
The Lake Nankang Qiyibai Biotechnology Co., Ltd. in Hunan, Wuhan Province (short Kang Biotech Co.) and Dupont’s Genencor Co. have entered into talks on a strategic cooperation for the development of the Chinese probiotic market. Kang Biotech is a leading supplier of...
CAS Institute of Zoology breeds leaner pigs using CRIPSR/Cas9 gene editing
The piglets were bred by knock-in of gene UCP1, coding for a mitochondrial brown fat uncoupling protein, which plays an important role in maintaining animal body temperature and energy balance. The ancestors of modern domestic pigs lost the UCP1 gene 20 million years...
China develops unmanned boats for coastal survey
Along a coastal line of 18,000 km, China is initiating the first unmanned boats „Jianghai“ to collect data and take videos. Jinghai No. 3 is 6.28 meters long and 2.86 meters wide, with a load capacity of 2.6 tonnes and a cruising power of 200 nautical miles. It can...
Chinese-French oceanographic satellite to be launched in 2018
The satellite named CFOSAT will operate in an orbit of 500 km for 3 years. It will be equipped with a surface-wave monitoring radar developed in France, which is already delivered, and a wind scatterometer developed in China. The satellite will analyze the wind and...
China’s internet-based medical industry counts over 2700 companies
According to a review by China’s Firestone Services, China is expected by 2020 to cover a market for medical information of 43 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 11 %. Internet-based medical care is playing an increasingly important role in improving hospital...