Traditional medicine provides us with a huge untapped resource of potentially effective and safe drugs, that have been tested in humans for thousands of years. In this episode, Jacques and Irene from Illumina traveled to Beijing, China, to interview Dr Chang Liu, the Deputy Director of the Center for Bioinformatics at the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development (IMPLAD) Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Dr Chang is applying genomic technologies to study the herbs used in Chinese traditional medicine to ensure the efficacy and safety of such compounds. Using Illumina technologies, Dr. Liu is able to obtain the detailed phylogenetic classification of an individual plant and provide better clarification for its medicinal uses both in traditional and modern medicine. #Illumina #genomics #phylogenics #traditionalmedicine