From the issue dated February 10, 1993
Creating a Revolutionary Style of Biology With Computers
Country's first department of molecular biotechnology is set up at U. of Washington
By Peter Monaghan
Seattle, Washington -- Leroy E. Hood foresees a time, not far off, when curing disease will be a matter of lightning-fast analysis of staggering amounts of information, followed by genetic tweaking, perhaps using microscopic robots.
Dr. Hood's work in pioneering this new combination of medicine and molecular biology has been aided by the University of Washington's establishment of the country's first department of molecular biotechnology.
That was made possible by a $12-million gift in late 1991 from William Gates, III, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation, a giant in the computer-software industry. As head of the department, Dr. Hood holds a chair that is named for Mr. Gates.
Like others in his field, Dr. Hood believes biotechnology can help doctors and researchers understand human genetics much better than they do today. But that, he is certain, will require a revolutionary new style of biology performed by researchers versed in several fields, including computer science, computation, applied physics, and engineering.
Technology far ahead of current capabilities also will be essential, he says. Only then will it be possible to catalogue, analyze, manipulate, subdivide, and re-categorize vast amounts of biological information quickly enough.
"If our department has any overriding theme," Dr. Hood says, "it is the idea that the future of biology is all about the analysis of complex systems and networks, and those can be immunologic networks, they can be neurologic networks, they can be networks of molecules."
Modeling networks, and finding the physiological relevance of them, he says, won't be predictable or linear. So, he concludes, "we need to develop completely new approaches to tools, new ways of thinking."
Dr. Hood's new department has been operating since September, with an annual budget of $5.5-million in federal research grants that he hopes to double within a few years. It already has a staff of 43, more than half of whom have worked with Dr. Hood since he was head of the National Science Foundation's Science and Technology Center for Molecular Biotechnology at the California Institute of Technology.
Biotechnology is shaping up as one of the most ballyhooed, and competitive, of modern industries. And it is one in which the United States has a clear, but increasingly challenged, lead.
Foremost among biotechnological undertakings is the Human Genome Project. Dr. Hood is one of the most prominent lobbyists for the mammoth, federally financed, 15-year effort, which is expected to cost at least $3-billion and involve hundreds of scientists. Its goal is to produce a data base that details the organization and functions of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body, and all three billion of their nucleotides. Genes consist of complex strings of four different types of nucleotides.
Once the data base is complete, scientists believe, it will revolutionize the medical profession's capacity to predict the health that people will enjoy during their lives, and what diseases they will suffer.
Such research may make it possible to perform what is known as gene therapy -- preempting or correcting genetic defects in cells. Dr. Hood believes, for example, that it will be possible to design a protein that will selectively attach to lung-cancer cells and kill them.
At Caltech, Dr. Hood earned international renown as a medical scientist for his work in molecular immunology. In the 1980's he was a pioneer in using computers and microsensors to invent automated gene sequencers to study genes, hormones, antibodies, and cells. That work contributed to rapid advancements in biotechnology in the 1980's and was among the developments that made the Human Genome Project possible.
The gene-sequencing machines help scientists locate genes by identifying the nucleotides that make up a strand of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the long molecules found in the nucleus of every cell of a body. Once the nucleotides are identified, the scientists must figure out where one gene ends and the next begins.
In appearance, the machines are deceptively simple: They are plastic-encased boxes about the size of washing machines into which samples of biological material are fed. Lasers scan the samples, and readings are recorded by attached computers.
A striking measure of the prestige that Dr. Hood has brought with him to Washington is the speed with which he persuaded more than a dozen highly regarded scientists to join his new department here.
One of them, Maynard Olson, a genome pioneer and professor of molecular biotechnology, says his reasons for coming here from Washington University in St. Louis were simple. "My view is that the technology of the 70's and 80's, which enjoyed pretty spectacular success, has largely run its course," he says. "I think the most pressing need is to inject a higher-level input from non-biological disciplines."
Dr. Hood also has high hopes for what he expects his department to accomplish. "If we talk about the human genome as a specific target, I would guess sequencing machines, for us to be able to take this on in a straightforward frontal attack, would have to be somewhere between 100 and 500 times more effective than they are now. And I think there's no question whatsoever we can achieve that within five years, given adequate resources."
He and his colleagues here, or researchers at several other institutions, will probably try to develop nanotechnological approaches -- tiny machines that are fast and efficient. "In principle," he says, "you could think about having a silicon chip the size of your thumbnail on which you could analyze 500 different DNA sequences." Current machines can analyze 36 possible sequences.
A mountain climber who hopes to spend weekends scaling the several nearby ranges, Dr. Hood says his biggest professional challenge will be to develop a novel, interdisciplinary approach to climbing the mountains of data that separate scientists from a view of fundamental human biological structures.
To reach that view, he says, will require teaching graduate students -- the researchers of the future -- the latest advances in physics, engineering, computer science, mathematics, and chemistry, all at once. "Breaching the interdisciplinary boundaries as we're talking about it," he notes, "has rarely been done. And I think it's the most difficult thing we have to do.
"I'm optimistic, but the way you'll test our success is to look in 10 years at the kinds of students we've produced," he says. He has set aside $2-million of the money Mr. Gates donated as "intellectual venture capital," to seed novel research projects by young scientists.
Those in the molecular-biotechnology department will work alongside staff members with interdisciplinary backgrounds in computer science and biology, as well as in engineering and biology. The department also collaborates with researchers in Washington's engineering and medical schools.
Mr. Gates became interested in TX helping the University of Washington set up a new department after hearing Dr. Hood deliver three lectures here in 1990. After the third, Mr. Gates and Dr. Hood went to dinner. "We had a terrifically interesting evening talking about computers and biotechnology," Dr. Hood recalls. Mr. Gates was so impressed by Dr. Hood's blueprint for an ideal biotechnology lab, and by his standing among biotechnologists, that he decided to bankroll not just a chair for Mr. Hood, but a whole department.
Dr. Hood's arrival here has put the university and the city of Seattle in a prominent position in biotechnology, somewhere behind Boston, San Diego, and San Francisco by his own estimation. Local biotech companies, including the ICOS Corporation, in which Mr. Gates invests, are expected to benefit from having such a major laboratory at Washington.
Dr. Hood hopes benefits will flow to academic research, as well. To achieve his goals, he will need to call on the most highly skilled computer-software programmers around. Mr. Gates has announced that he will set up a research group at Microsoft that may in the future develop the software that will run futuristic sequencing machines and other technologies.
University labs are in the best position to take the risk of developing the tools needed to do biotech work, Dr. Hood says, but others may end up actually using the tools. "If we can develop instruments that are 100 or 500 times faster than what we have now," he says, "then my view is that a few large centers -- and they could be companies, they could be private research institutes -- will really take on most of the task of sequencing the human genome." He, together with local biotech researchers and industry executives, are considering starting such a company.
Not only will those companies bring universities handsome royalties, he says, but their work will free up departments like his to tackle the enormous task of analyzing and processing the mountains of information about the genome.
Another important benefit of Dr. Hood's department could be its potential impact on schools in the Seattle area. It is beginning cooperative outreach programs with local schools that will allow outstanding high-school science teachers to work with the department's researchers to develop courses. Another program will permit teachers to bring students to the department to sequence small segments of chromosomes.
Says Valerie Logan, the department's outreach-education coordinator: "That would allow students to do real science that would go into a national data bank."
Copyright © 1993 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
