张馨月 罗湖外国语学校初三（7）班

    On March 26, we visited BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute) in Yantian. Two technicians from the publicity department acted as our guides and introduced the company to us briefly.

    BGI was founded in Beijing in 1999 with the mission of supporting the development of science and technology, building strong research teams and promoting the development of scientific partnership in the genome field.

    In 2007, BGI’s headquarters were relocated to Shenzhen. Until now, BGI has successfully completed a large number of projects. What most impressed me was the SARS project.

    After acquiring the samples of SARS on April 15, 2003, BGI completed the first genome sequence of the SARS virus within 36 hours, identified the proteome of the same virus within 48 hours, and developed the first generation of the test kit for detecting it.

    A total of 300,000 test kits were immediately produced and donated for clinical application. Chinese President Hu Jintao highly rated the achievement of BGI against SARS.

    We’ve learned a lot today. It was really a pleasure to have a chance to visit BGI.