Published January 24, 2001
Biology and nuclear weapon’s research unite in a collaboration to create a supercomputer 30-times more speedy than the fastest in the world. The agreement, among Sandia National Laboratories, Celera Geonomics and Compaq Computer, was signed last week at the Dept. of Energy in Washington DC. The objective is to understand the most complicated problem in science: the function of all human cells in unison.
Dr. Craig Venter said the new supercomputer will cost “a multimillion dollars over the next four years” and be able to process 100 million-million (100 trillion) operations per second. Venter’s team at Celera completed the mapping of the human genome in only two years, a decade ahead of the government’s forecast for the project.
With this exceptional tool, genes can be analyzed holistically, in totality of the entire human genome. This will be a considerable departure from previous scientific methods searching for cures to disease.
The dance of life is the intricate interactions among the body’s 100 trillion cells, 100,000 genes and many more proteins. Instead of isolating genes in diseased environments, their study will shift to examining healthy genes all at once.
Celera’s expertise with algorithms, mathematical processes for handling the data, is their contribution. President Paul Robinson of Sandia, owners of the world’s largest supercomputer, said separate research efforts in this field are following parallel paths, and it is bigger than any one company. Compaq will bring their fast Alpha chip into building the hardware. Collectively, the goal of predicting, treating and genetically preventing diseases, one at a time, is achievable within this generation.
IBM is already underway with their own supercomputing project focusing upon protein folding. The collaboration effort is complementary to IBM Blue Gene project, not in competition with it. Although Celera’s business is selling proprietary databases of genome information, their collaboration with Compaq and Sandia is developmental, not a data project.
Sandia is an U.S. Department of Energy national security laboratory. They design components for the nation’s nuclear weapons, perform energy research and development, and are involved in national security threats assignments, both military and economic. Sandia partnerships with U.S. industry and government groups to collaborate on emerging technologies that support their mission.
The fastest supercomputers in the world are at D.O.E. which simulate the effects of nuclear explosions. Sandia’s ASCI Red supercomputer was the fastest machine in the world for several years until last July. That distinction is now held by another DOE supercomputer, the IBM-built ASCI White, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Genetics professor Maynard Olsen from Washington State, in a brief presentation to pharmaceutical executives last month, debunked the fundamentals of their industry. He casually told them, “Researchers are trying to develop drugs that focus on why people get diseases instead of why people stay healthy. The concept that basic biological defects are most important is illogical.”
New genes are being continually discovered. But repairing those broken genes is next to impossible. Olsen calls it the “gene today, gone tomorrow syndrome.” He said, “The direct pharmaceutical use of that knowledge is to develop carcinogens. Genes that prevent disease would point more directly to beneficial drugs.”
Stephen Friend, CEO of Rosetta Inpharmatics, admitted, “It’s time for a change in an industry with a 99.9% inefficiency rate. It is, in fact, an accidental market.”
With few exceptions, most discoveries are found while searching for something completely different. For instance, statins, or drugs that lower cholesterol, were found while attempting to treat cows for worms.
Critics say that the study of disease is valid because a target is needed within a cell that will respond to a formulated drug. Studying “healthy” people is subjective, they say.
This simple redirection of scientific approach has upset most of the industry-funded status-quo. The study of disease will continue until abundant evidence from the study of health overwhelms their stodgy reluctances. For instance, academic researchers recently found healthy people with a gene called CCR5 are resistant to HIV.