Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
1999 and 2004, the number of universities offering academic programs
in bioinformatics more than tripled, from 21 to 74.
96
The acceleration
and rapid completion of the HGP made it clear that, as one
Nature
editor put it, “like it or not, big biology is here to stay.”
97
Data would
continue to be produced apace, and bioinformatics would continue to
be in demand.
A shift towards an information-oriented systems view of bi-
ology, which grasps both mathematically and biologically the
many elements of a system, and the relationships among them
that allows the construction of an organism, is underway. But
the social change required to make this shift painlessly should
not be underestimated.
98
Indeed, the publication of the human genome in 2001 escalated the
sense of crisis among biologists to the extent that some feared that tra-
ditional biological training would soon become redundant.
If biologists do not adapt to the computational tools needed to
exploit huge data sets . . . they could fi nd themselves fl oundering
in the wake of advances in genomics. . . . Those who learn to
conduct high-throughput genomic analyses, and who can mas-
ter the computational tools needed to exploit biological data-
bases, will have an enormous competitive advantage. . . . Many
biologists risk being “disenfranchised.”
99
Again, the “wave” of data created a sense that the old tools were just
not up to the job and that a radical re-skilling of biology was necessary.
A sense of desperation began to grip some biologists: David Roos no
doubt spoke for many biologists when, in the issue of
Science
announc-
ing the human genome draft sequence, he fretted, “We are swimming
in a rapidly rising sea of data . . . how do we keep from drowning?”
100
“Don't worry if you feel like an idiot,” Ewan Birney (one of the new
breed of computationally savvy biologists) consoled his colleagues, “be-
cause everyone does when they fi rst start.”
101
This discomfort suggests that bioinformatics marked a radical break
with previous forms of biological practice. It was not merely that the
HGP used computers to “scale up” the old biology. Rather, what al-
lowed bioinformatics to coalesce as a discipline was that the production
and management of data demanded a tool that imported new methods
of doing and thinking into biological work. In other words, the com-
