For more information on this and other exciting courses:
Just when we thought we’d mastered words like www, bytes and bits, along comes ‘bioinformatics’, adding still more jargon to the often confusing world of IT – drawing now from the world of genetics.
Frankly, the glossary is best left to the likes of Professor Matt Bellgard, a world leader in the field and Director of the Murdoch-based Centre for Bioinformatics and Biological Computing. All most of us need to know is that bioinformatics is the harnessing of the massive power of computers and development of software for unravelling complex genetic problems, whether they be in human medicine or agriculture.
Scientists developing vaccines, for example, call on Professor Bellgard and his team to spell out the order of genes on a bacteria’s chromosome. In the past, vaccines were developed over many years, mostly through trial and error, until suddenly the winning genetic formula was hit upon. Using bioinformatics, the computers can lay out the genetic blueprint of a bacteria, or ‘genome’, very rapidly, allowing scientists to zero in on the key genes.
Plant breeders are also rushing to get help. Sorting through a wheat plant’s 18 billion bases of DNA to identify the spot on its chromosome where highly commercial traits sit, is a breeze with bioinformatics. “Wheat varieties that may have taken 12 years to get to commercial production would maybe take seven or eight today,” said Professor Bellgard.
Once these chromosome hot spots are located, ’markers’ are developed that can then be used by breeders of other plants and even animals. This cross-species analysis is called ‘comparative genomics’ – referring to the theory that all plants and animals, even humans, having a shared ancestor in single-celled plankton that miraculously came to life in primeval swamps.
Suffice to say that these things are important parts of bioinformatics, so important that a new Centre of Excellence for Comparative Genomics will soon be launched. The new institution has received $1.5m seed funding from the State Government’s Centres of Excellence program. A further $7m has been injected in either cash or in kind by a string of partners who quickly came on board, confident of this new science’s future.
The Centre for Excellence for Comparative Genomics has now settled as a successful collaboration between Murdoch University, The University of WA, Edith Cowan University, Tokai University (Japan), Proteomics International, Beijing Genomics Institute and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Professor Bellgard has been appointed to be the Centre’s inaugural Director.
That his science is now blossoming and delivering such obvious benefits is music to his ears, literally. Professor Bellgard began his career with a PhD in computer music.
“Whether it’s a pattern in classical music or the sequence of genes on a chromosome, it’s not a lot different – what we want is to identify the best bits so that we can make more of the same,” he said.
