International Cooperation

Flemming Besenbacher Granted CAS Int’l Award

An awarding ceremony was held by CAS for Dr. Flemming Besenbacher, Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, Aarhus University, Fellow of the Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters on July 2，during which CAS President Bai Chunli conferred the CAS International Science and Technology Cooperation Award to him for his outstanding contribution to the cooperation between CAS and Denmark.

Achievement Obtained by Joint Efforts

The Tomato Genome Consortium (TGC), a group of over 300 scientists from fourteen countries around the world, has sequenced the genomes of the domesticated tomato and its wild ancestor, Solanum pimpinellifolium. The sequences provide the most detailed look at the functional portions of the tomato genome, revealing the order, orientation, types and relative positions of its 35,000 genes. Tomato is a member of the Solanaceae or nightshade family, and the new sequences are expected to provide reference points helpful for identifying important genes in tomato’s relatives. This achievement, which was published as a cover story in the May 31 issue of the journal Nature, is expected to lower costs and speed up efforts to improve the world-wide tomato production, making it better equipped to combat the pests, pathogens, drought and diseases that now plague growers. China has contributed sequencing chromosome 3 and 11, two of the tomato’s 12 chromosomes. The chromosome 3 team was led by Profs. Li Chuanyou and Xue Yongbiao from the Institute of Genetics & Developmental Biology (IGDB), CAS.