It’s been a decade long journey, but the publication of a completely gapless telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genome assembly finally marks the end of the Bauhinia Genome Project.

It’s been a while since our last update, but exciting work is happening behind the scenes on Bauhinia genomics, and there have been more Bauhinia art exhibits too. As it’s DNA Day again we have some big Hong Kong genomics news we thought it was worth breaking our silence for.

Bauhinia Genome has focussed on teaching the people of Hong Kong about genomics by studying the DNA sequence of our emblematic flower Bauhinia blakeana. Now our neighbour cities of Guangzhou in Southern China, and Kaohsiung just across the Taiwan Straits, have joined the floral genome club, with their city flower sequenced. Bombax ceiba L., the red silk cotton or kapok tree,

Today is DNA Day, commemorating the day the structure of DNA was published in 1953, as well as the day that the human genome project was completed in 2003. Being the 65th and 15th anniversary of these two scientific milestones makes it a good time to reflect at how DNA sequencing has gone from an ... [Read more...]

The post DNA Day 2018: Junior Genomicists Go Hong Kong appeared first on bauhinia genome.

Bauhinia Genome Update While we’ve been quiet on the blog things are still progressing in the world of Bauhinia Genome. Data has been continued to be analysed by students at CUHK and their transcriptome assemblies have been made public from the GigaScience GigaDB platform. Prof Stephen Tsui presented this work at the International Botanical Conference last summer, and you can download the poster here.

The botanical (latin) name for the Hong Kong Bauhinia flower is Bauhinia x blakeana , with the x denoting it is a hybrid between two species. In the hierarchy of TED talks, TEDx are independent TED-like events organised by volunteers such as universities agreeing to follow certain principles. Bauhinia x has finally met TEDx, with Scott’s talk at TEDxEduHK just being posted online today.

Following our previous posting on a Bauhinia-inspired art exhibition from Avon Lee, our second update on Bauhinia art covers new and ongoing work from from multi-genre artist, critic and teacher Ellen Pau. This is currently on at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre in Kowloon Park, and is organised by the Hong Kong Museum of Art while their galleries are being renovated.

As you’ll have seen in our previous posting, the main rationale for the Bauhinia Genome project is education. Both of the mysterious history of the Hong Kong’s floral emblem, and of the study of DNA to improve the genomic literacy of the public. We are communicating this via various forms, but one we haven’t touched upon so far is the medium of art.

To paraphrase Tony Blair on his priorities when becoming UK Prime Minister, the three reasons we are carrying out the Bauhinia Genome Project are education, education, education. Through motivating the Hong Kong public to help solve the interesting origin mysteries of their floral emblem we hope to educate in three ways.

In the latest issue of CNN’s monthly ‘On China’ program, Kristie Lu Stout covered the cutting-edge science going on in China, and you may have spotted a certain emblematic genome project featured. On top of a video segment featuring BauhiniaGenome, she spoke with Dennis Lo, circulating DNA pioneer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Pei Duanqing,the Director of the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health;

Use this handy guide (click to enlarge) for spotting the different Bauhinia trees most common in Hong Kong. Flowering period is a big giveaway with ‘purpurea’ stopping flowering just as ‘variegata’ starts. But notice that Bauhinia blakeana flowers the longest, from October to April – an incredible 6 months! That’s partly because of it being ... [Read more...]

The post Know your bauhinia appeared first on bauhinia genome.