Bruno Sobral

There's no denying that bioinformatics is an exploding field. And as team leader for agricultural and environmental genomics at the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR), a non-profit bio-informatics organization, I am struck by the lack of qualified people to meet the challenge.

The most effective solution for overcoming this limitation, as vast quantities of genomic data stream in from private industry and the public sector, are partnerships between groups specializing in bioinformatics and those in genetic mapping, physical mapping and genomic sequencing. But before going further, it is necessary to define some terms in the quest for a common language.

With the development of molecular biology over the past couple of decades, ever more powerful tools have been developed to dissect the role of genes in a wide assortment of traits, such as diseases of various organisms. In addition, new information has helped in the understanding of inherited traits and their influence on behaviour. More recently, as a result of computational and engineering advances engendered by the Human Genome Project, the field of genomics has emerged. Genomics has two major components: DNA sequencing in the molecular genetics laboratory; and bioinformatics, another new term which was spawned by genomics. Thus, genomics is a combination of complete nucleotide sequences for any organism and the information tools required for analysis of data. Bioinformatics is defined as the computational systems used to collect, store and analyse biological information. These include software systems that take in DNA sequence data, database systems that store data, and software systems that analyse stored data.

One of the key challenges in bioinformatics as a field is to move smoothly through the transitional period of collections of incompatible components to integrated systems. In the next few years, people working in bio-informatics will be tackling issues of interface homogeneity, development of scaleable software toolkits for data analysis, inter-database connectivity, consistency of terminology and long-term funding of public repositories of information.

Universities have not generally played a major part in bioinformatics because they have not had the resources. As genome projects broaden their scope from the human genome to model systems and agricultural and food genomes, universities need effective bioinformatics support. One solution is to enter partnerships with groups already experienced in bioinformatics, especially within the public sector. In this manner, DNA sequencing/physical mapping groups at universities can quickly develop large datasets without having to create their own bioinformatics infrastructure. NCGR, for example, has recently established a partnership with New Mexico State University to develop a national biotechnology information facility (NBIF — http://nbif.org/), a five-year, $8.5-million partnership. NBIF is developing a plant-specific metabolic pathways database while providing training and bioinformatics support for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. NCGR's strategy is to provide similar bioinformatics support to leading agricultural research institutions.

Through such partnerships, collaborative development of human resources in bioinformatics can become reality. Not only will this provide much-needed bioinform-atics expertise in universities; it will also provide the private sector with individuals trained to make use of genomic information. As genetics and biology enter the twenty-first century, it is clear that genomics is changing the way biological research is done.

Public information and biological reagent repositories are a decentralizing and democratizing force in research, much as the Internet was and is for computers. Eventually, any scientist may have direct and rapid access to information and reagents without needing to create and maintain a large-scale operation. I hope that this will also mean that scientists will be rewarded more for creativity and less for their fund-raising capabilities.