Chinese scientists announced that they have completed a gene bank with over 8,000 DNA samples from all its ethnic minorities except the Gaoshan in Taiwan.

It took more than four years to build the country's largest gene bank of minorities with funding from the government, said Professor Xiao Chunjie, of southwest China's Yunnan University, which organized the project.

He said the move was vital to preserve the human genetic diversity as many nationalities throughout the world had interbred and disappeared.

"Anthropologists and geneticists have shared the hope of building a gene bank since 1980, when the falling ethnic populations began to attract attention."

Home to 25 of the nation's 55 ethnic minorities, with its remote mountains keeping its ethnic minorities isolated, Yunnan Province was designated home of the gene bank, he said.

"The gene bank is indispensable to China and even the world."

China boasts one of the world's most diverse genetic pools.

Xiao said the bank would help to prevent and cure regional genetic diseases.

Scientists had identified the genes that cause diseases like hypertension after studying the samples.

More than 6,600 diseases are known to be caused by single gene disorder and many fatal and chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer and immune deficiency diseases, are caused by multiple gene disorders.

Source:佚名