HK team joins elite league with lab feat
Thursday, April 17, 2003
hongkong.scmp.com
MARY ANN BENITEZ, Medical Reporter
It took just a week in less-than ideal laboratory conditions for seven Hong Kong students and their professors to follow in the steps of a Canadian team and crack the genetic code of the Sars-causing coronavirus.
Yesterday, the science post-graduate students stood proudly with their University of Hong Kong (HKU) mentors to tell how teamwork helped the university become only the third laboratory to unravel the genetic code of the virus.
A Chinese University team released its own report on the university's Web site.
Frederick Leung Chi-ching, dean of science at HKU, who led the students, said: "Our facilities are different from those of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the one in Toronto. However, even if we do not have the machinery we do have the human resources right here, the students in the lab coats."
The university has yet to acquire the latest gene sequencer used extensively in North America.
Student Chung Jone-hon said he and his colleagues worked on the sequencing after their duties at Queen Mary Hospital. "We would go back to the labs at night and continue with the sequencing project," Mr Chung said. "We know that it is important to Hong Kong because it helps to develop a more reliable, sensitive and rapid diagnosis test."
The coronavirus was taken from the lung samples of the brother-in-law of mainland doctor Liu Jianlun, who stayed at the Metropole Hotel in Kowloon, infecting seven other travellers and sparking the global outbreak. The brother-in-law had gone sightseeing with the doctor when he arrived from Guangdong on February 21.
Professor Leung said: "We started on April 7 and in about 7 ½ days we achieved a 100 per cent result."
The students said they were not worried about getting infected, as the specimens had already been safely converted to DNA genetic material by virologists at the university's department of medicine. |
