First UK/Japan joint funding for biology

The UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Japan’s Science and Technology Agency (JST) have signed an agreement to align their funding for systems biology research, the first time the BBSRC and a Japanese agency have agreed to jointly fund a programme.

BBSRC and JST have agreed to promote partnering and exchange of researchers between the two countries, with a focus on building links between the systems biology research bases in both countries.

BBSRC has invested over GBP 80 million in different systems biology programmes in the UK over the past four years. Instead of using the traditional biological approach of observation and experiment, this research uses computer simulations and modelling to process results, design new experiments and predict results.

The agreement follows a joint BBSRC-JST workshop on systems biology held in Tokyo earlier this year.