David Cyranoski,GuangzhouThe bustling streets of Guangzhou — thecentre of last winter’s outbreak of SevereAcute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) — nolonger show much evidence of the panicthat gripped the region. But the epidemicled to an array of changes in research andpublic health that are just beginning tomake themselves felt.

This summer, plans were laid to establisha new health-research institute in the cityitself. Reforms of China’s biomedicalresearch infrastructure — including theestablishment of a Chinese version of themain US biomedical research agency, theNational Institutes of Health(NIH) — haveacquired fresh momentum. And work isunder way to build or refurbish a network oflaboratories with the aim of equipping themto handle dangerous pathogens.

Plans for the Guangzhou institute wereconfirmed on 5 July,when the Chinese Acad-emy of Sciences (CAS),the city’s governmentand the province of Guangdong each agreedto invest 100 million yuan (US$12 million)in the project. The institute will be estab-lished on a new science park in westernGuangzhou.A director, charged with assem-bling a dozen teams to do research there, willbe named by the end of October.

The institute’s backers say that they aimto attract a strong contingent of researchersfrom outside China and to establish the facil-ity as a base for international cooperation inhealth research. Its areas of specialization

have yet to be determined, but may includecardiovascular disease and cancer, as well asemerging diseases.

More far-reaching are proposals for anational, grant-giving biomedical researchagency modelled on the NIH. The proposalwas made public in a statement earlier thisyear by 22 senior researchers, including ZhuChen, vice president of the CAS.

Most biomedical research in China issupported directly through branches of theacademy, but advocates of the proposal wantan agency that would distribute competitivegrants, as the NIH does. “We need to have stable support that can build a health-research community,”says Chen.

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SARS triggers biomedical shake-up in China

Secret garden opens up to public

This incubator facility in Guangzhou’s science park awaits the arrival of the new research institute.

David Cyranoski,GuangzhouChina’s largest botanical garden is to get amajor upgrade, as officials try to involve itin educating the public about science. Butsome botanists at the garden are appalled atthe idea of thousands of people trampingthrough their precious collections.

The South China Botanical Garden in Guangzhou has until now been runprimarily for research purposes. Over thenext three years it will receive 300 millionyuan (US$36 million) from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences, the government ofGuangdong province and the city council.Plans still stress the garden’s scientific role,and the project calls for 30 internationallyrecognized articles to be published eachyear. But the refurbished garden is hoped todraw two million visitors every year with itsnew slant on education and entertainment.

During the SARS epidemic, the numberof visitors to the garden’s open areas surgedfivefold. “They were looking for somethingclean and pure,” says deputy director Zhou

Guoyi. To keep their interest, educationfacilities will be expanded and the numberof species increased from 5,000 to 9,000.Many additions will be wild and endangeredplants, opening up new areas of research.

Nonetheless, some botanists fear thattheir work will be compromised and thechange could harm existing collections. Themost important ones — including magnolia,ginger and bamboo gardens — have untilnow been closed to the public. Researchersare worried about vandalism and theft. ■

Pure research: botanists fear visitors seekingthe purity of nature will damage the collections.

This month, a group of some 20 seniorChinese scientists worldwide, led by Ray Wu,a plant biologist at Cornell University inIthaca, New York, and Yi Rao, an anatomistand neurobiologist at Washington UniversitySchool of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri,appealed to China’s prime minister WenJiabao to support the idea. Wu says that thegroup has now been asked to provide a moredetailed version of its letter.

The letter criticizes what it calls China’sunderinvestment in biomedical research,compared with other countries. It cites theneed for an organization that can carry out “a fair and transparent peer-review system”.China’s research structure — dominated bythe CAS — has been criticized for lackingsuch a system.

The organization would initially distrib-ute extramural grants,although in the futureit could also support its own laboratories,as the NIH does. The NIH’s annual budget of $27 billion represents about 0.27% ofthe US economy, Rao says, and the proposalcalls for a Chinese equivalent to spend 0.14%of China’s economic product over the nextten years.

Despite Chen’s support, the plan is likelyto meet stiff opposition from other CAS officials, who want to retain their centralposition in Chinese biomedical research.

Meanwhile, many laboratories in Chinaare pressing forward with construction ofbiosafety laboratories that meet the interna-tional P3 standard, which is required formost work on infectious diseases, and eventhe P4 standard for work on the most dan-gerous pathogens.

But the drive lacks coordination,researchers say. “No one can keep track ofthem,” says Yun Zhang, a specialist at theCAS’s Kunming Institute of Zoology in theprovince of Yunnan, which is spending 20million yuan on labs in each class to houseprimate models for the study of SARS. ■

© 2003 Nature Publishing Group

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Minister knockeddown by court verdicton mosque demolitionNew Delhi India’s science minister, MurliManohar Joshi, has submitted hisresignation in the wake of a scandal over the destruction of an ancient mosque morethan ten years ago.

In December 1992, fanatical Hindus toredown the Babri Masjid mosque at Ayodhyain the state of Uttar Pradesh, as they wantedto rebuild a Hindu temple they believe oncestood on the same site. The act sparkednationwide rioting and fighting betweenHindus and Muslims that resulted inhundreds of deaths.

On 18 September this year, an UttarPradesh court upheld allegations that Joshi,along with six others, instigated the mosque’sdestruction. The court has ordered that thegroup face criminal charges, although Joshimaintains his innocence and has filed apetition against the ruling. India’s deputyprime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, was alsonamed in the case but has been exonerated.

As Nature went to press, Joshi’sresignation had not been accepted by India’sprime minster, Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Money runs out for projectto spy on bank transactionsWashington The US Congress has axed aPentagon intelligence office that has comeunder fire from civil-rights advocates.

The Information Awareness Office waspart of the Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency (DARPA), an arm of thedefence department. The office wascriticized last year for a plan to comb thefinancial details of millions of citizens insearch of potential terrorists.

The project was the brainchild of formerDARPA director John Poindexter, whoresigned last month amid a row over anotherproject, in which participants could bet on future terrorist attacks (see Nature 424,601; 2003).

Many US security experts argued that theprojects should not have been terminated,despite protests from civil-rights groups thatthey were unethical.

California rejects partyline on stem-cell workSan Diego More human embryos could beavailable for research in California as ofJanuary 2004, thanks to legislation signedinto law last week.

The law requires staff at fertility clinics toask all patients if they are happy for theirdiscarded embryos to be used for research.Currently, the law only suggests discussingthe option of embryo donation withpatients.

This ruling is part of a raft of legislationregarding stem-cell work in California — inspite of a federal decision in 2001 to limitsuch research. A registry of donatedembryos is planned, and a 13-membercommission of scientists, ethicists, attorneysand religious leaders will be in place by 2005to provide guidelines for the work. Somestate legislators are also pushing forhundreds of millions of dollars in bonds tocreate a pool of stem-cell research funding.

Brazilian ruling sows seedsfor transgenic futureWashington Brazil, one of the world’s largestexporters of soy beans, has legalized theplanting of transgenic versions of the cropfor the coming growing season. Thegovernment’s decision is expected to pavethe way for the permanent legalization ofgenetically modified crops.

Brazil’s courts banned transgenic crops in2000, but farmers in the south of the countryhave long been suspected of importingtransgenic seeds illegally from Argentina.Currently, 20–30% of Brazil’s soybean crop isthought to contain transgenes. Last year thegovernment granted an exemption from theban, initially for a single growing season.That concession has now been extended foranother year.

Brazil’s official ‘transgenic-free’ status has allowed it to continue selling produce toEuropean countries that refuse to importtransgenic food. But that could soon change.

Nigeria joins the spaceage with first satelliteLondon Africa took a big step into space on27 September with the successful launch ofa Nigerian Earth-monitoring satellite.

The craft, NigeriaSat-1, will monitorNigerian territory to help prevent disasterscaused by floods, landslides, oil spillages andfires, or to assist relief workers during suchemergencies. It will be operated by thecountry’s National Space Agency in Abuja.

The satellite will form part of a disaster-monitoring constellation — a cluster ofsatellites built by the British companySurrey Satellite Technologies. An Algeriancontribution to the cluster was launched lastNovember, and two other satellites — fromTurkey and Britain — were launched withNigeriaSat-1 by a Russian booster. A Chinesesatellite will join them in early 2005.

NigeriaSat-1 is the first product of a e20-million (US$23-million) investment in space science made by the Nigeriangovernment in 2001.

CorrectionDue to an editing error, last week’s article “SARStriggers biomedical shake-up in China” (D.Cyranoski Nature 425, 333; 2003) incorrectly statesthat most of China’s biomedical research issupported by the Chinese Academy of Scienceswhen in fact the responsibility is divided amongseveral governmental bodies. The article alsoincorrectly implies that the academy aims to retainthis central position in biomedical funding byresisting new initiatives. In fact, many leaders ofthe academy strongly support the initiativedescribed in the article and have been instrumentalin introducing it to China’s prime minister.

Washington First he sequenced his own DNA.Now Craig Venter has sequenced the DNA of hispet poodle, Shadow (pictured).

Choosing to sequence a dog is a wise move,as there are more than 350 known canine geneticdiseases — more than for any other animalapart from humans — although picking a poodlemay seem a curious choice. A US governmentproject, expected to be completed early nextyear, has chosen to sequence a boxer, as this isone of the least genetically variable breeds andis likely to give a representative sequence.

But dog breeds are more than 99% identicalto one another, so Shadow’s sequence shouldbe adequate for studying some diseases. Itshould also help track canine evolution. Basedon the sequence, which is 80% complete, it isestimated that 18,473 dog genes have human

equivalents — slightly more than are known tobe shared by humans and mice (E. F. Kirkness et al. Science 301, 1898–1903; 2003).

Venter’s dog’s genome sets tongues wagging

Demolition squad: the Babri Masjid mosque wasdestroyed by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992.

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