

Single Chinese facility has more DNA sequencing power than the entire USA. - phreeza
http://www.economist.com/node/16349434?story_id=16349434

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carbocation
The headline is almost certainly inaccurate. I'm fairly certain that Baylor,
the Broad Institute, and Wash U (doing the Thousand Genomes Project) have more
than 120 next-gen sequencers among them. This is not to mention the dozens of
other medical centers with next-gen machines.

Perhaps it is true that this Chinese facility will have more Illumina-brand
sequencers than have been sold in the US.

Edit: Here is just a taste of evidence to support my assertion: Illumina just
sold 51 new machines to the Broad --
[http://investor.illumina.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=121127&p=ir...](http://investor.illumina.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=121127&p=irol-
newsArticle&ID=1435009&highlight=) I'm beginning to wonder about the fact-
checking...

~~~
phreeza
The author conveniently inserted a "so it is claimed" there, which probably
means you are right.

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melling
Hopefully, China is going to contribute a lot to basic research in the next
decade. Shipping cheap junk to the US isn't nearly has beneficial as doing
hard science, along with R&D. If they pull it off, we'll look back in the year
2020 and laugh at how little we knew.

~~~
loewenskind
Well, R&D is certainly extremely important but extremely difficult to justify
with the short focus of the modern corporate world (e.g. "What, you want me to
spend _billions_ and in the end it may not even produce anything? How is that
increasing share holder value?").

I also don't think you realize just how badly you're addicted to this cheap
junk.

------
ars
Don't read this as a ding in some way on biotechnology in the US.

The machines were made in the US, in San Diego, CA and Hayward, CA
<http://www.illumina.com/company/locations.ilmn>

China is just buying a bunch of them, but quantity is not a substitute for
quality.

~~~
c1sc0
The most interesting part of the article: "Part of the reason for building his
newest sequencing centre in Hong Kong is to reassure researchers from other
countries that the facility will operate inside a reliable legal framework."

This is why, not matter how much capital you inject, more open societies
ultimately prevail wrt. innovation.

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mahmud
Yikes! Reddit style submission title editorializing, through convenient
quoting.

"tl;dr;hca: Too long, don't read, here is the conclusion I want you to arrive
at"

~~~
phreeza
sorry... I didn't mean to suggest any conclusions, but rather highlight the
part of the article that struck my interest.

I had a less sensationalist version, which was unfortunately >80 chars.

------
phreeza
Also, they are planning to conduct the largest-scale of correlations between
intelligence and genetics so far.

~~~
jared314
History has taught me enough to be worried about that.

~~~
narrator
Well what if you could give your self a brain upgrade via gene therapy? What's
so bad about that? I guess many would be upset as it would go against our
ideology here in America that frowns on any suggestion that intelligence has
innate components.

~~~
dman
Fun error message - "This update failed to install successfully. Please try
again after reboot"

