Bioinformatics: The Fun Part

ust as having a dictionary does not ensure that a person can speak the language, having a blueprint of a building doesn't offer any information about what the people inside do. So while the Human Genome Project and other research efforts may produce huge amounts of data telling us what gene lies where, it all amounts to one big catalogue-or, more accurately, many big catalogues-of biological information. That is, until someone analyzes and synthesizes the meaning of it all.

Due in part to the Human Genome Project and in part to advances in research techniques, there is, now more than ever, a tremendous demand for expeditious and reliable methods for the collection, organization, storage, retrieval, analysis, and dissemination of biological data. And a new breed of scientists-called bioinformatics scientists-are addressing the wealth of information about genes and their products, and the structures and functions of both.

The field of bioinformatics encompasses three essential activities. The first is database management, which involves the systematic organization of massive amounts of biological data. The second is developing improved methods for analyzing this tremendous collection of data. And the third activity is ensuring accessibility; information is only as useful as it is accessible.

Bioinformatics by the Harbor

Bioinformatics was in its infancy at CSHL in the 1980s when computers were undergoing very rapid changes.

Jim Garrels (who worked at CSHL from 1978 to 1995) designed a computer program in the mid-1980s that allowed the user to visualize biological data. His program, called QUEST, used computers to view colorful, two-dimensional pictures of specific cellular proteins under various experimental conditions. Much later, in 1993, when personal computers were common, QUEST became one of the first scientific analysis programs to be made accessible to the public via the Internet, under the guidance of CSHL computer experts Gerald Latter, Pat Monardo, and Tom Boutell. The group went on to establish databases of protein functions and initiated the Laboratory's QUEST Protein Database Center.