The third annual World DNA and Genome Day conference opened on Wednesday in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, drawing more than 1,500 scientists, including 10 Nobel Prize winners.

The four-day conference, organized by the BIT Congress, which is dedicated to promoting scientific exchanges and collaborations, brought together leading scientists to share their research results in biotechnology and genomics.

Xi'an Deputy Mayor Huang Haiqing said the conference is the largest of its kind ever held in China, with some 2,500 scientists, academicians and entrepreneurs from 59 countries and regions participating.

Nobel laureate Johann Deisenhofer, a German biochemist who was in attendance, praised Xi'an for creating a modern biomedical industry.??

Xi'an has 315 biomedical enterprises engaged in chemical raw materials, chemical agents, manufacturing of proprietary Chinese medicines, processing of Chinese herbal?medicines, biological and biochemical sanitation materials and medical supplies, according to Huang.???

Contact the reporters at [email protected], [email protected]