While computing and information technology dominated the closing decades of the 20th century, seers predict that the 21st century will be the age of biology. Now, Virginia Tech has merged the strong thrusts of these two centuries into a new field called bioinformatics, which operates at the convergence of biotechnology and information technology.
With initial funding from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission (see sidebar), the university has launched the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. This new initiative will build upon Tech's considerable strengths in biotechnology; information technology; and such diverse fields as agriculture, veterinary medicine, computer science, engineering, biology, and other life sciences and related areas.
"Bioinformatics is a logical extension of the strengths the university has built over the years," notes Tech President Charles Steger. "With this new discipline, we can greatly enhance Virginia Tech's stature as a major research university, provide exciting new intellectual challenges for faculty and students in a broad range of disciplines, and help create new economic opportunities in the region and the commonwealth."
While the field of bioinformatics is so new that no single definition exists, the aim of this discipline is to decode the mountains of data that make up the genome, or genetic map, of living organisms.
To analyze and interpret such masses of data will require new levels of computational power and skillhence the "informatics" in bioinformatics.
Across the country and around the world, a great race is under way to decode the genetic information of humans, plants, and animals. The much-heralded mapping of the human genome is simply the start of this race. The institute will focus the majority of its early efforts in the areas of functional genomics concerned with agriculture and the environment. This process will yield new approaches to agriculture and human medicine, providing pest- and disease-resistant crops and allowing the customization of medical treatment for a wide variety of human illnesses. The implications for economic development opportunities and regional growth are obvious; many believe that the payoffs will be much greater for bioinformatics than for the technologies that spawned Silicon Valley. Virginia Tech's impressive lead in certain areas of biotechnology has spawned a number of startup companies that are not only providing new jobs in Virginia, but that also promise to pump new life into some sectors of the state's agriculture industry as well. Wedding those successes to the powerful support that can be provided by the institute has the potential to launch Virginia into the first ranks of desirable locations for still more companies in the biosciences arena.
The university's proposal for a major initiative in bioinformatics to ensure that the commonwealth is positioned well in this worldwide competition received a friendly reception from Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore. The governor referred it to the tobacco commission as a project that could help stimulate economic development in Southwest and Southside Virginia. In April, the commission approved initial funding of $11.6 million for two years. Shortly thereafter, the university announced the hiring of Bruno Sobral, an internationally known scientist who specializes in agricultural bioinformatics. Sobral is well suited to move forward with Virginia Tech's vision for bioinformatics.
"Initially we plan to investigate comparative plant and animal networks, with a focus on agricultural biosafety," Sobral says of the new institute's work. "This is a critical area as we must be able to respond to emerging threats posed by the pathogens of major crop species. For example, Phytophthora infestans, cause of the Irish potato famine, appears to be making a comeback. The tools of bioinformatics can help us analyze and interpret such organisms and develop countermeasures far more rapidly than ever before possible. With the world's burgeoning population and demand for food, this can be a matter of life and deathand this is only one example."
One of the factors that lured Sobral to Virginia Tech is the willingness of faculty members on campus to work with colleagues in radically different disciplines. The ability of professors to combine their efforts in innovative ways will give the institute a dynamic manner that is virtually unique.
A native of Brazil, Sobral comes to Blacksburg from the National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe, N.M., where, as chief scientist, he was responsible for strategic direction, team building, and administration of scientific programs. Since earning his doctorate in genetics from Iowa State University in 1989, he has worked as a research scientist for the California Institute of Biological Research in La Jolla, Calif., and at the Center for Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture in Canberra, Australia. He has also served as an adjunct faculty member at several universities.
Clark Tibbetts, a professor of computational sciences and information and former director of George Mason University's Institute for Biosciences, Bioinformatics, and Biotechnology, is the new institute's associate director. Rounding out the senior administrative team is David Sebring, a former executive for IBM, who is director of government and corporate relations.
Among the researchers now on staff is Pedro Mendes, who is developing computer software to simulate biochemical networks. Another researcher, Jennifer Weller, will be designing and implementing a high-performance core wet lab infrastructure that many researchers on campus can use. And Allan Dickerman's research will center on developing a portal to a comparative network containing plant genetic data, as well as the analysis tool to query it.
According to Sobral, many individual faculty members at the institute will seek alignments with academic departments that will allow them to teach classes and advise students. A number of graduate student and post-doctoral positions are built into the staff of the institute to provide graduate and post-graduate training opportunities, which will closely tie the institute to the university. In time, degree options or programs in bioinformatics may be considered.
Sobral says that the details of getting such a complex organization up and running seem daunting at times but that he keeps the simple purpose of the institute in view as much as he can. "The real long-term vision," he explains, "is to understand how this black box called life works on Earth."