Plateau germplasm resources bank in China's Qinghai passes acceptance review

XINING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Qinghai-Xizang Plateau germplasm resources bank in northwest China's Qinghai Province has passed its acceptance review, the provincial department of science and technology has announced.

The germplasm resources bank, led by the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will provide platforms for sample management, omics sequencing, data analysis and information sharing.

The project has built automatic ultra-low temperature storage, living plant and animal storage, fish storage, medicinal material components and compounds storage and microorganism storage. It has preserved more than 50,000 germplasm resources, effectively improving the preservation capacity of biological germplasm resources on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.

Yang Qi'en, deputy head of the institute, said that since its inception, the bank has completed reference genome analysis of 19 representative species in the Sanjiangyuan area, including snow leopards and brown bears, and successfully analyzed the evolutionary history and population dynamics of five animal groups, including snow leopards and schizothorus fish, and built a plateau animal genome database.

The bank contains more than 10 TB of animal genome data, and will promote the development, protection and application of plateau wildlife resources, Yang added.

The Sanjiangyuan area holds the origins of three mighty rivers -- the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang. It is one of the regions on the world with the most concentrated biodiversity at high altitude, and it is also an important ecological security barrier and biodiversity treasure house on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.