In the one year since Canada took possession of the Genome Data Base -- which shares a small room with a large air conditioner -- the on-line system has logged 20 million hits. Estimates suggest it serves more than 1,000 scientists in 50 countries.
Yesterday, hospital, provincial government and corporate officials announced $25-million in new funding to double the system's hardware capacity and increase its speed by 70 per cent.
Yet just a few years ago, this supercomputer
was one the United States had been ready to unplug.
U.S. health officials did not see the database "as a means
to an end for getting genetic research done," said Conover
Talbot, who once managed the system in its original home at Johns
Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore.
"They decided to focus on the prize of getting the sequence."
So Canada, whose contribution to mapping the human genome has been otherwise small, landed the chance to play genetics librarian to the world.
"The role of librarian isn't a passive role any more. It's not stacking books on a shelf, but assembling information in a fashion that people can actually use it," Mr. Talbot said. "This is the most encyclopedic of any database in the world."
The database will allow doctors to quickly home in on particular areas of the massive human genome that may be involved in a given ailment.
For example, the Genome Data Base highlights particular genetic markers in certain chromosomes that may offer hints to researchers about which genes are involved in a variety of conditions such as deafness, kidney disorders or cystic fibrosis.
U.S. health officials established the system in 1989. But by 1998, they deemed it unaffordable.
Publicly funded researchers were racing to sequence the human genome for public use. Meanwhile, Rockville, Md.-based Celera Genomics Group, a private company headed by Craig Venter -- a government scientist-turned-entrepreneur -- pulled up the rear, threatening to lay claim to ownership of the map for profit.
"It created a scare and so the [U.S. National Institutes of Health] wanted to put every available dollar into DNA sequencing," said James Cuticchia, who had started the database in Baltimore as a researcher of bioinformatics -- a field that combines computer technology with biology.
But Dr. Cuticchia correctly guessed that after the U.S. Department of Energy had spent $40-million (U.S.) to fund the database for eight years, it would "not want to see the efforts go down the toilet."
Still, by the time he learned it was in trouble, Dr. Cuticchia had moved to Sick Kids in Toronto, where Canadia's premier geneticist, Lap-Chee Tsui, had managed to lure him.
Over the course of 1998, Dr. Cuticchia's will and a massive donation from an anonymous benefactor made the system's move from Baltimore possible.
"It will become the most important database in the world," said Dr. Cuticchia, now head of the Ontario Centre for Genomic Computing.
New funding sources will no doubt be needed. A spokesman at Sick Kids said that with equipment and salaries, the Genome Data Base costs $9-million (Canadian) a year to run.
Yesterday, the hospital, the province and SGI Canada (formerly Silicon Graphics Canada) contributed a total of $25-million.
The system itself, nicknamed "Deep Maple," is 1,000 times faster than a personal computer. Its associated technology has been used to bring dinosaurs to life on Hollywood screens and virtually crash test Harley Davidson motorcycles and Chevy Prowlers.
But Dr. Cuticchia pointed out that the database relies on researchers to submit DNA sequences into the system from all over the world as they complete them. Through the Internet, the sequences are then made available to everyone else.
The database, he said, has also been a boon to fledgling biotechnology companies in Canada, which would otherwise have to spend up to 20 per cent of their start-up costs on similar technology.
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