This is a 1:45 release
US government, genome company, Compaq to hook up
(Writes through with quotes from news conference)
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Genome hunters at the U.S.
Department of Energy and Celera Corp. <CRA.N> announced a
marriage of computer technology and biology on Friday, saying
they will mine the human gene map for information they hope
will transform medicine.
They will team up, along with Compaq Computer <CPQ.N>, to
write powerful computer programs, and to build a giant new
computer to go through the genome sequence and find out where
the genes are and what they do.
"We're writing the first draft of the future here," Neal
Lane, science adviser to President Bill Clinton, told a news
conference. He echoed what scientists have been saying -- that
deciphering the human genome will transform medicine and basic
understanding of biology.
Lane, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, Sandia National
Laboratories President Paul Robinson, Celera President Craig
Venter and Compaq Computer Corp. Vice President Bill Blake
signed the multimillion dollar agreement on Friday.
Because it is a development agreement, they said there is
no clear dollar amount involved but it is expected to total in
the tens of millions of dollars.
"These are ... tools that are necessary to unlock the
mysteries of life," Richardson told a news conference.
The human genome was sequenced late last year, but the
sequence only gives the code for the human genetic map. Now
that code has to be broken.
The A's, T's, C's and G's that make up DNA repeat over and
over again in patterns that the body can make sense of, but
which look like so much stuttering to the human eye. Computers
can find the meaning in the patterns.
Celera made its own sequence, and the publicly funded Human
Genome project, which includes the Energy Department, made
another. Many genes are already known, but the code is so dense
that it is not yet even clear how many genes there are.
Celera already has a big room filled with computers, most
of them made by Compaq, to crunch through the genetic
information.
Using Compaq's alpha chip-equipped computers and new
algorithms written by Celera's in-house team, they reduced an
operation that took nine hours to just five minutes, Venter
said. But he said it is clear that more capacity is needed to
do the work ahead.
CALCULATIONS MUST BE DONE IN SECONDS
"We need to do that kind of calculation that takes five
minutes in a matter of seconds," he said.
That will be the aim of the new alliance.
"As Compaq and the Department of Energy's Sandia National
Laboratories move toward creation of the next generation of
supercomputers for defense purposes, we look forward to helping
both groups develop the new machines, software and algorithms
to advance life sciences," Venter said.
"Just three years ago, the computational needs of biology
were thought to be minor and irrelevant to the computing
industry. Today, biologists are setting the pace of development
for the industry."
Sandia and Compaq, in consultation with Celera, will
design the next generation of supercomputer. They should be
able to run 100 trillion operations per second, or 100
teraflops.
IBM <IBM.N> says its "blue gene" computer can do 100
teraflops. Blue Gene was designed in part to help model how
proteins are folded -- an important aspect of taking genetic
information into the practical world of biology.
The most advanced computer at the Energy Department's
Lawrence Livermore Labs can do 12 teraflops. One being built
now at Los Alamos, where nuclear weapons are designed, will be
able to do 30 teraflops.
"We in the nuclear weapons industry thought for years that
nothing could be more complex than nuclear physics," Sandia's
Robinson said. He said it was clear that modeling the 250,000
interacting proteins in the human body is far more complex.
Sandia and Celera will write new computer software and the
algorithms, the mathematical formulas, that are used to analyze
the dense maze of genetic code.
(( -- Washington newsroom 202 898 8300, fax 202 898 8383,
e-mail washington.bureau.newsroom@reuters.com))
REUTERS
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