Yang Huanming - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Dr. Yang Huanming, also known as Dr. Henry Yang, is one of China's leading genetics researchers. Yang directs the Beijing Genomics Institute

Beijing Genomics Institute

BGI , known as the Beijing Genomics Institute prior to 2008, is one of the world’s premier genome sequencing centers. Its sequencing output is expected to soon surpass the equivalent of more than 15,000 human genomes per year....

, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Chinese Academy of Sciences , formerly known as Academia Sinica, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is an institution of the State Council of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with institutes all over the People's Republic of China...

in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. Yang received his B.Sc from Hangzhou University (Zhejiang University

Zhejiang University

Zhejiang University , sometimes referred to as Zheda, is a national university in China. Founded in 1897, Zhejiang University is one of China's oldest institutions of higher education...

) in 1978, followed by a master degree in biology in 1982 from the Nanjing Railroad Medical Institute (now Southeast University

Southeast University

Southeast University , colloquially Dongda is a public, coeducational research university located in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China....

). Yang earned his Ph.D in 1988 in the Institute of Medical Genetics University of Copenhagen

University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...

, Denmark. He then completed his post-doctoral training in Europe (at CIML, INSERM/CNRS, Marseille, France, 1988–90) and the United States (at Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

and UCLA, 1990–94).

Yang's work include the mapping and cloning

Cloning

Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...

of human gene

Gene

A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...

s, the sequencing and analysis of the human genome

Genome

In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....

, human genome diversity and evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

, and the ethical

Bioethics

Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy....

, legal, and social issues related to genome research. The study of Yang and his collaborators at the Beijing Genomics Institute on the rice genome made the cover of the April 5, 2002 issue of Science magazine. Yang led a 2000 UNESCO sponsored symposium held in Hangzhou

Hangzhou

Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...

on research ethics that focused on some questionable research projects by foreign researchers in Anhui

Anhui

Anhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...

Province and on strengthening the protection of human research subjects in China.

Yang led China's participation in the international Human Genome Project

Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...

. Yang is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also Coordinator-in-China of the International HapMap Consortium and Chief Coordinator of the Chinese Hybrid Rice Genome Consortium. Yang is Secretary-General of the Chinese Human Genome Project (CHGP), Secretary-General of the Human Genome Diversity Committee, and Secretary-General of the Committee of Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI), CHGP. He is a member of the Expert Panel of the National Office for Administration on Genetic Materials, and the Expert Committee of Field of Life Sciences, National Programs on High-tech (“863”), China.

Yang is also a member of Collegium International

Collegium International

International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium, also called Collegium International is a high-level group created in 2002.-Origin:...

, an organazation of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and an economically sustainable world.

A Scientific Entrepreneur

Yang was born on October 6, 1952 near Wenzhou

Wenzhou

Wenzhou is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. The area under its jurisdiction, which includes two satellite cities and six counties, had a population of 9,122,100 as of 2010....

, Zhejiang

Zhejiang

Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...

, the hometown of some of China's most energetic entrepreneurs. Yang is himself one of China's most successful scientific entrepreneurs. Yang leads an institute that has a dual public-private nature since it first established with the help of Wenzhou businesspeople as the Huada Genomics Research Institute and then later received Chinese government support as the Beijing Genomics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Chinese Academy of Sciences

. Unusual for an institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80% of the 500 research positions at the BGI laboratories in Beijing and Hangzhou are supported through competitive grants from both Chinese and foreign sources. Some of the research work of the laboratory is supported by selling genetics and genomics related commercial services such as paternity testing by Huada Beijing and the Huada Genomics Institute of Hangzhou and the Huada Biotechnology Co. of Hangzhou.

External links

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