Systems Biology Brings Life Sciences Closer——Report on the China-UK Systems Biology Workshop 2005

The China-UK Systems held during June 20-21 Biology Workshop 2005 was in the National Science Park of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. It was organized by the Institute of Bioinformatics, Zhejiang University, and was initiated by Prof. Dr. Jun Zhu （Zhejiang University） and Prof. Dr. John Findlay （University of Leeds, UK）. The workshop was part of the program called UK-China Partners in Science, a one-year campaign that was initiated by the British government to explore more collaborations between UK and China on science and technology. It was attended also by a representative of this program, Mr. Frank Yuan, senior science ＆ innovation officer. The idea of the workshop was to bring together experts with specialists in systems biology in order to promote the ＂natural partnership＂ between scientists from the two countries. The most important items of systcms biology considered at the workshop were： （1） New technologies and advances in systems biology; （2） Research developments in genomics and proteomics; （3） New methodologies and software in computational biology; （4） Research collaboration on systems biology between China and UK.     

Profile of Dr. Shaojun Liu

正Dr. Shao-Jun Liu is an expert in fish genetic breeding, who was born in 1962 in Changsha, Hunan province, China. He received his B.S. in biology in 1986 and his M.S. in zoology in 1989 at Hunan Normal University. He obtained his Ph.D.in zoology in 2000 at Sun Yat-sen University. From 1998 to1999, he was supported by the China Scholarship Council to research fish molecular biology in France. In 2019, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and currently, he is a Professor at Hunan Normal University and the Director of the State Key Laboratory of the Developmental Biology of Freshwater Fish.     

For Our founding father of ABRC, Prof. Ray Wu (1928–2008)

Dr. Ray Wu, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Mo-lecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University, passed away on Sunday, February 10, 2008, at the age of 79. Dr. Wu was a pioneer in DNA sequencing and recombinant DNA technology, a renowned scientist in rice genetic engi-neering, a strong and long time advocate for scientific re-search and education in Chinese Taipei and Chinese Mainland, and most of all, a genuine mentor and true friend to many of us, worldwide and at ABRC.     

Profile of Dr. Hualan Chen

正Dr. Hualan Chen is a virologist whose research focuses on understanding influenza virus and developing vaccines against this virus. She studied veterinary medicine as her undergraduate and graduate majors in Gansu Agricultural University, receiving her Bachelor degree and Master degree in 1991 and 1994, respectively. In 1997, she received her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). After three years of postdoctoral research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, she was offered a professorship in 2002 at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of CAAS and was appointed as the Director of the     

Eighty years of Chinese Association for Physiological Sciences in retrospect

The Chinese Association for Physiological Sciences （CAPS） celebrated her 80th anniversary last November. Eighty years ago, Dr. Robert K. S. Lim, Professor of Physiology at the Peking Union Medical College, in association with Dr. Wu Xian （Professor of Biochemistry） and Dr. B. E. Read （Professor of Pharmacology）, sponsored the establishment of the Chinese Physiological Society. They held the inaugural meeting in Beijing on February 27, 1926. This event was an important landmark in the history of the development of physiological sciences in China.     

Profile of Prof. Ke-Qin Zhang

<正>Dr. Ke-Qin Zhang is a microbiologist who has spent more than 40 years on harnessing the natural existing nematophagous microorganisms to combat against plant-parasitic nematodes. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. degree from China Agricultural University in 1998 and then joined as the director of the Key Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology and Fermentation Technology of Yunnan in Yunnan University.     

Medical Virology in Malaysia

Virology is a branch of biological science dealing with the study of viruses, and medical virology focuses on the study and control of diseases due to viruses that is of medical importance. The development of medical virology in Malaysia has its beginning in the Institute for Medical Research （IMR）, following the establishment of the Division of Medical Zoology and Virus Research in the institute on 23 March 1953. The second institution in the country to establish diagnostic and research work in medical virology was Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya. This was followed by University Kebangsaan Malaysia, University Sains Malaysia and University of Sarawak Malaysia. The National Public Health Laboratory （NPHL） is the latest institution to establish a laboratory in 2003 for virus isolation and services to support country surveillance and outbreak investigation of infectious diseases due to viruses. In the field of medical virology, Malaysia contributed substantially in the areas of virus diagnostic services, development and research ranging from survey and documentation on the existence and prevalence of viruses causing diseases in Malaysia, clinical presentation and epidemiological features of virus diseases, evaluation of new diagnostic tests to pathogenesis of viral diseases. Malaysia contributed to the discoveries of at least 12 new viruses in the world. ASEAN plus Three （China, Japan, Republic of Korea） Emerging Infectious Programme was established to overcome the challenges and impact of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in this region. Malaysia as the co-ordinator of the laboratory component of the programme, contributed to strengthen the regional laboratory capability, capacity, laboratory-based surveillance and networking. The future of medical virology in Malaysia in terms of integration of diagnostic, reference and research to support the country＇s need will be enhanced and strengthened with the on-going development of the National Centre fo