http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11902
From the name it has something to do with the genome … or genetics. It’s a new, coined word that refers to the analysis of the genetics of many organisms together at the same time. So what is this? And why would I care?
About 2-1/2 years ago I discovered that genetics is cool … duh! Well, better late than never. In spite of love of computing it had never sunk in to me that the genome of any plant or animal is a program running inside a computer. And the computer is the living organism.
Why would I care about microbial communities? Except for viruses they are the most abundant life on Earth and have an overwhelming effect on our environment and our lives. Consider that about half the carbon dioxide on Earth is processed through microbes that live in the oceans. Then consider that the most modern climate models of ocean life include just five organisms. This is despite recent findings that point to thousands of species, which do many different things and presumably influence our climate.
Since most of these organisms physically look alike how would you ever tell them apart? … or determine what they do? This is now being done through their DNA. There is a revolution going on out there in analyzing DNA that is the equivalent of the twentieth century computer revolution. The new DNA sequencing technologies are producing data faster and cheaper each year and are overwhelming the computers and programs that can process it. There is even talk of each of us having our complete DNA sequence available as part of our medical record for a couple hundred dollars! But this does no one any good if we can’t read and understand the program … remember? DNA is the program of life. What does it say? How does it make the computing machinery of microbes live? And then what do those microbes do to the environment?
Complete DNA sequences of thousands of organisms are piling up in databases because of these new DNA sequencing machines. Most of this remains unanalyzed for several reasons. We don’t yet know the right biological questions to ask. We don’t have all the clever programs that would actually ask these questions of the computer. And there is now so much data that many questions totally overwhelm even existing supercomputers.
Sounds bad, huh? An opportunity missed? Absolutely not! This is a special time in science history … a convergence of events that bodes great opportunity for those who dare to jump on it. High performance computing expertise abounds from the twentieth century developments in the “hard” sciences and engineering. The revolution in DNA sequencing is offering a new opportunity to apply this expertise. And it’s in an field that is of such importance to society.
This is really exciting and I’m having a great time stepping across this boundary … working with sequences of DNA to sort out questions of who those microbes are and what do they do. Metagenomics.
