China's increasing investment and development of gene research indicate that it may soon reach the level of developed countries. "We hope to overtake them in some areas," said Chen Zhu, vice president of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) at Berlin's International Human Gene Meeting.

China is one of the six countries that participated in the human genome diagram project completed last year. Work by Chinese scientists on the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) for human chromosomes 3 and 21 accounts for 10 percent of the total research into human SNP chromosomes.

Chen, who is also director of the Chinese National Human Genome Center Shanghai and Shanghai Institute of Hematology, also listed scientific achievements in paddy and silkworm genome sequencing. In October 2001, scientists from China completed a working framework for paddy genomes. A diagram of paddy genes, the first fine diagram of genomes for crops in the world, was completed in December 2002. In November 2003 a framework for silkworm genomes was completed.

Scientists researching disease occurrence mechanisms and medications have completed genomic sequencing for pathogenic microorganisms such as leptosipira and Staph. epidermidis.