Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
from DNAStar (a company based in Madison, Wisconsin), and one
from IntelliGenetics. Each of the contractors would subcontract with
Los Alamos. Of singular importance in the eventual decision to award
the contract to IntelliGenetics was the perception that it, more than
BBN, was in touch with the needs of the biological research community.
IntelliGenetics had close ties to the molecular biologists at Stanford—
particularly Douglas Brutlag—and had successfully run BIONET, a net-
work resource for providing software tools for biologists, since 1983.
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No doubt the NIH hoped that a greater awareness of the research needs
of molecular biologists would translate into a more usable and fl exible
database system.
At around this time, many biologists were beginning to think about
biology in new ways. The fi rst plans for determining the sequence of
the entire human genome were made at a meeting in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, in 1986.
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Even at this early stage, the planners of what came
to be called the Human Genome Project (HGP) realized the need for
“computational technology” capable of “acquiring, storing, retriev-
ing, and analyzing” the sequence data.
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Since both Los Alamos and
the early stages of the HGP were funded and organized by the Depart-
ment of Energy, GenBank personnel were well aware of the plans for
a massive scaling up of sequencing efforts and the effect that it could
have on their already strained ability to get data into the database in a
timely fashion. Those advocating the HGP were soon talking to Goad
and other GenBank staff about the demands that their project would
place on GenBank. By 1988, James Watson, in his capacity as director
of the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR), was
well aware of the importance of GenBank for the HGP:
Primary products of the human genome project will be infor-
mation—genetic linkage maps, cytological maps, physical maps,
DNA sequences. This information will be collected and stored
in databases, from which it will be made available to scientists
and clinicians. In this sense, the raison d'etre of the genome
project is the production of databases.
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Los Alamos and IntelliGenetics too realized that data coming from the
HGP would not only strain the capacity of their staff, but also require
thoroughgoing structural changes. In 1985, the complete sequence of
the Epstein-Barr virus (about 170,000 bases) had already caused trou-
ble for BBN's computers.
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In 1988, a “technical overview” of GenBank
reported that the addition of human genomic data would require the
