2017 academic annual meeting of the Microbial Resources and Big Data Center of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS) was held in Beijing on Dec. 27, 2017.

LIU Shuangjiang, Director-General of IMCAS, signed two strategic cooperation agreements with GAO Fu, academician and Director of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and YIN Ye, CEO of BGI, China.

IMCAS and CDC will focus on the development of pathogenic microbial resources and the prevention and control of major infectious diseases. Both will make full use of their own pathogenic microbial resources and data standards, and endeavor to cooperate in this field and build "Joint Research Center for Pathogenic Microbial Resources and Big Data".

IMCAS and BGI, China cooperated on common values of "benefiting mankind and serving the society". Based on this common strategic needs, they will collaborate in high-throughput sequencing, key gene research, data sharing and data standards based on microbial genomes and microbiomes, and other aspects applied to micro-ecological health, environmental testing, industrial and agriculture, marine development and other fields. They will also jointly train talents in microbial genome and microbial research and build a platform for the comprehensive data sharing of microorganisms.