Brazil's biotech boom

摘要

In May 1997, a pair of Brazilian scientists spent a weekend in the country discussing a bold idea. Jose Fernando Perez, the science director at the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), a state-funded agency and one of Brazil s leading research sponsors, had been looking for game-changing research initiatives. Biologist Fernando Reinach, one of his advisers, had a sufficiently adventurous plan: kick-start biotechnology research throughout Brazil by sequencing a genome.rnFor many risk-averse scientists in the old guard, who were acutely aware of how far the country lagged behind the rest of the world in biotechnology, this plan seemed overly ambitious. But the duo pushed ahead to build the capacity for genomics and bioinformatics that Brazil lacked, quickly organizing a team to conduct the project and then settling on a bacterium to sequence. FAPESP invested the equivalent of US$12 million, largely dedicated to sequencers, computers and reagents, while the team brought together and trained researchers from a range of fields to develop a broad and long-lasting set of skills and knowledge.