Scientists in China are hoping that a new genetic technique will allow them to discover exactly how many of the traditional herbal remedies so favoured by the Chinese effect the body.
The Shanghai-based Straits Times newspaper cited the Xinhua news agency which said that the China Human Genome Centre in Shanghai is hoping to detect more than 5,000 effective elements of Chinese medicine.
Chen Zhu, director of the centre, said: "Human genome technology has brought vital changes to the bio-pharmaceutical industry, and China will make it a platform to develop traditional Chinese medical science."
He said that by next year, scientists would understand fully the 'human genetic map', making further research into genetic information relating to human disease and lifespan possible.
After the gene database was established, Chinese scientists would use the effective elements found in traditional medicine to test disease-related human genes, in a bid to decipher Chinese medicine, the paper said.
Professor Wang Qiaochu of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine said the cures were an exact science, even if it was not known why they worked.
"Traditional Chinese medicine has existed over thousands of years, and a qualified doctor must recite hundreds of prescriptions by heart which have been passed down for generations, before he practises medicine independently," he said.
He added that only within the past century had scholars of traditional Chinese medicine started to probe the mechanism and effective elements of these treatments.