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FOR
centuries, biology has been an empirical field
that featured mostly specimens and Petri dishes.
Over the past five years, however, computers
have changed the discipline—as they have
harnessed the data on genetics for the pursuit
of cures for disease. Wet lab processes that
took weeks to complete are giving way to digital
research done in silico. Notebooks with
jotted comments, measurements and drawings have
yielded to terabyte storehouses of genetic and
chemical data. And empirical estimates are being
replaced by mathematical exactness.
Welcome
to the world of bioinformatics—a branch
of computing concerned with the acquisition,
storage and analysis of biological data. Once
an obscure part of computer science, bioinformatics
has become a linchpin of biotechnology's progress.
In the struggle for speed and agility, bioinformatics
offers unparalleled efficiency through mathematical
modelling. In the quest for new drugs, it promises
new ways to look at biology through data mining.
And it is the only practical way of making sense
of the ensuing deluge of data.
The
changes wrought by computers in biology resemble
those in the aircraft and car industries a decade
or so ago, after the arrival of powerful software
for CAD (computer-aided
design) and CFD (computational
fluid dynamics). In both industries, engineers
embraced the new computational modelling tools
as a way of designing products faster, more
cheaply and more accurately. In a similar way,
biotech firms are now looking to computer modelling,
data mining and high-throughput screening to
help them discover drugs more efficiently.
In
the process, biology and, more specifically,
biopharmacy has become one of the biggest consumers
of computing power, demanding petaflops (thousands
of trillions of floating-point operations per
second) of supercomputing power, and terabytes
(trillions of bytes) of storage. Bioinformatics
is actually a spectrum of technologies, covering
such things as computer architecture (eg, workstations,
servers, supercomputers and the like) web
designing company , storage and data-management
systems, knowledge management and collaboration
tools, and the life-science equipment needed
to handle biological samples. In 2001, sales
of such systems amounted to more than $12 billion
worldwide, says International Data Corporation,
a research firm in Framingham, Massachusetts.
By 2006, the bioinformatics market is expected
to be worth $38 billion.
The
opportunity has not been lost on information
technology (IT) companies
hurt by the dotcom bust and telecoms meltdown.
Starting in 2000, IBM was the first to launch a dedicated life-sciences division.
Since then, a host of other IT
firms have jumped aboard the bioinformatics
bandwagon. Along with IBM,
Sun Microsystems has staked a claim on the computing
and management part of the business. Firms such
as EMC and Hewlett-Packard
have focused on data storage. Agilent, SAP
and Siebel provide so-called decision support.
Even build-to-order PC
makers such as Dell have entered the fray with
clusters of cheap machines.
A
swarm of small start-up firms has also been
drawn in, mostly to supply data, software or
services to analyse the new wealth of genetic
information. Companies such as Accelrys in San
Diego,California, Spotfire in Somerville, Massachusetts,
and Xmine in Brisbane, California, are selling
software and systems to mine and find hidden
relationships buried in data banks. Others such
as Open Text of Waterloo, Ontario, and Ipedo
in Redwood City, California, have built software
that improves communication and knowledge management
among different areas of pharmaceutical research.
Gene Logic of Gaithersburg, Maryland, has created
a business to collect samples and screen their
genetic code for proprietary research libraries.
And Physiome Sciences of Princeton, New Jersey,
is providing computer-based modelling systems
that offer an insight into drug targets and
disease mechanisms.
Bioinformatics
is not for the faint of heart, however. Over
the past year, the fortunes of a number of biotechnology
firms have faltered, as venture-capital funds
have sought alternative investments. Venerable
names of biotechnology, including Celera Genomics
of Rockville, Maryland, LION
Bioscience of Heidelberg, Germany, and others,
have found themselves scrambling to change the
way they do business. Yet, for all the turbulence
in the industry, the bioinformatics juggernaut
remains on track, fuelled by new forces changing
the pharmaceutical industry. |
