The Gene Factory

LETTER FROM SHENZHEN THE GENE FACTORY A Chinese firm's bid to crack hunger, illness, evolution—and the genetics of human intelligence. BY MICHAEL iPECTER ' I \& twenty-mile drive from Hong which is made up of four nucleotides: drives, churning through the carefiiUy X Kong International Airport to the adenine, thymine, cytosine, and gua packaged DNA samples that arrive center of Shenzhen, in southern China, nine. Specific strings of those mole every day from every part of the world. can take hours. There is customs to ne cules—there are three billion pairs in To preserve the chemicals needed to gotiate and a border to cross, but they the human genome—are arranged to process that DNA, the machines are aren't the problem; the problem is the gether to make genes; genes, in turn, kept in frigid rooms that few people are furious pace of commerce between the produce the proteins that we need to permitted to enter. Racks of parkas line former British colony and one of the fast survive. Since 1995, when Craig Venter the corridors, where hundreds of deter est-growing cities in the world. Tmcks, sequenced the first bacterium, biologists mined young men and women—the av cars, vans, and buses cram the roadways, have been on a cmsade to catalogue tlie erage age of B.G.I, employees is twenty- ferrying laborers of all kinds at all times. DNA of nearly every species on earth. six—occupy identical powder-blue Until the nineteen-eighties, when Deng No group has been more aggressive in cubicles, each bathed in the eerie glow Xiaoping designated the area as China's its attempt to produce those maps than of their computer monitors. first special economic zone, Shenzhen B.G.I.: the company has .already pro B.G.I., much like Shenzhen itself, had been a tiny fishing village. Suddenly, cessed the genomes of fifty-seven thou seems to have been formed in a single eleven million people appeared, seem sand people. B.G.I, also has sequenced instant: September 9,1999, at nine sec ingly out of nowhere; factories sprang many strains of rice, the cucumber, the onds after 9:19 A.M. (In China, even up, often housed in hastily constmcted chickpea, the giant panda, the Arabian dispassionate scientists crave auspicious tower blocks. camel, the yak, a chicken, and forty beginnings.) The group got its start in Thirty years ago, there were a few types of silkworm. None of those en Beijing, first as a nonprofit organiza guesthouses and little else. Today, a deavors are quite as odd as they may tion and then as an affiliate of the Chi visitor can stay at the Four Seasons or seem. Genomic research has shown nese Academy of Sciences. But as Jian the Ritz, shop for ten-thousand-dollar that the human activity responsible for Wang, the company's president, and handbags at Hermes, and move around climate change has also caused a serious one of its founders, told me recently, town in a chauffeured Bentley. Yet decline in the panda population. Silk 'We were too crazy for them"—too in Shenzhen has remained a factory town. worms have played a central role in the dependent. 'We were kicked out." At At various times, the city has served as Chinese economy for thousands of fifty-nine, Wang, with gently graying China's Detroit, its garment district, years. B.G.I, has also sequenced the Ti hair on a perfectly round head, and and its Silicon Valley. Now, as the betan antelope, the coronavirus respon dressed in an olive-drab B.G.I, camp world's scientists focus with increasing sible for SARS, and the DNA of a four- ing shirt and matching pants, looks like intensity on transforming the genetic thousand-year-old man, known as an avuncular Zhou Enlai. He considers codes of every living creature into in Inuk, obtained from a tuft of his hair B.G.I.'s expulsion from the academy to formation that can be used to treat and that was discovered in Greenland's have been an essential component of ultimately prevent disease, Shenzhen permafrost. the company's success. The founders, is home to a different kind of fac The company's four thousand em Wang and sixty-one-year-old Huan- tory: B.G.I., formerly called Beijing ployees operate out of an eight-story ming Yang, who is now the chairman, Genomics Institute, the world's largest former shoe factory on the eastern edge had both received advanced training genetic-research center. With a hun of Shenzhen, not far from the inlet to in the West. They were eager for China dred and seventy-eight machines to se the South China Sea. Sequencing facil to play a role in the Human Genome quence the precise order of the billions ities are sterile places, and the B.G.I, Project, the effort to create the blue of chemicals within a molecule of DNA, operation looks more like a call center or print needed to decode all our genes. B.G.I, produces at least a quarter of the back office of a bank than like the They tried, and failed, to persuade the the world's genomic data—more than home of China's most important bio Chinese government to establish a se Harvard University, the National Insti technology company. There are no test quencing center. So they created a com tutes of Health, or any other scientific tubes or vials of blood on display, no pany of their own, raising enough cap institotion. mice or rats, or even much traditional ital to hire nearly fifty researchers and Much of modern molecular biology laboratory space. Instead, there are a se buy a few basic machines. At first, the and microbiology has been based on the ries of advanced sequencing arrays, taUer scientists worked out of a crowded effort to decipher the basic code of life, than refrigerators and stacked with hard apartment in Beijing. Their furniture 34 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 6, 20I4 2 O t * H X 1= 5 o •1^ consisted of the cardboard shipping B.G.I, counts as advisers reads like a reference library—freely accessible, boxes that had contained their new Double Helix Hall of Fame: James wary scientists hope, to anyone who equipment. The group was responsible Watson, who, with Francis Crick, dis wants to use it. for only about one per cent of the re covered the structure of DNA; Eric search that went into the genome proj Lander, one of the genome project's ' I ^he order of the four chemicals in ect. In 2000, however, when BLU Clin leaders, and the director of the Broad JL each molecule of DNA deter ton announced that a rough draft of the Institote, of M.I.T. and Harvard; and mines the physical characteristics of genome had been completed, he made John Sulston, a Nobel Prize winner (as every living organism, and sequenc a point of thanking China. B.G.I, may is Watson) and the founder of one of ing those molecules has made it possi well have been the first organization in the world's largest genomic-research ble for scientists to begin to identify the country's history to participate in an centers, Britain's Wellcome Tmst Sanger causal connections between diseases international scientific collaboration. Institute. It took more than a decade, and genes. But a sequencing machine "It wasn't a big role, but it got us and three billion dollars, for a team of without software is about as useful as started," Wang told me when we met in international experts to map the first a laptop with no operating system. It Shenzhen, where the company estab human genome. Since then, the costs works essentially like a molecular ver lished its headquarters in 2007. (It now have decreased so rapidly that B.G.I., sion of a paper shredder, cutting up operates sequencing centers throughout with its relatively cheap and plentifial immense strings of genetic informa the world. It opened a facility in Shang labor force, can do that same work in a tion, then spitting them out in frag hai on November 11, 2011: 11/11/11, few days for about four thousand dol mented piles. Each string produced by at eleven seconds afi:er 11:11 A.M.) De lars. By the end of next year, Wang told a sequencing machine is referred to as spite the company's limited involve me, the price of sequencing a genome a "read," and thousands of overlapping ment, the Human Genome Project wiU fall below a thousand dollars. Driven reads are created for every genome. provided the two men access to the largely by those plummeting costs, Researchers, relying on software that world's most accomplished geneti B.G.I, intends to transform DNA into analyzes patterns, stitch those reads cists. Today, the list of scientists whom a common resource, a kind of universal into comprehensible units. At B.G.I., when DNA samples arrive—usually on FedEx trucks—-workers check to make sure they are packed properly in dry ice. Then they are taken to a qual ity-control area, where they are pre pared for analysis. Most DNA sam ples sent to B.G.I, from labs around the world are processed in Hong Kong; Shenzhen focusses on submissions and research projects from within China. The company has bet its fiiture on laying out the genetic codes of as many life-forms as possible. While I was in Shenzhen, I saw a display that described B.G.I.'s plans, which include the Mil lion Human Genomes Project, the Million Plant and Animal Genomes Project, and the Million Microecosys- tem Genomes Project.

Load more