Robert Fripp

Convergence of IT and bioinformatics offers limitless potential

By Robert Fripp

The coming bioinformatics age is likely to make the silicon age of the past 50 years look like a dress rehearsal. Molecular computation will play an increasing role in computational science, horizons for which will expand in ways we cannot yet know. Such forward gazing was the central theme of the recent 50th anniversary of the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC). Experienced speakers and participants used the occasion to describe 2001 as a fulcrum, a watershed (www.itac.ca/halfacenturyhigh).

Underlying the past 25 years was the question of how information technology (IT) would converge with telecommunications. ITAC’s Half a Century High! conference posed a new question, trying to predict the convergence of IT and communication technologies (CT) with bioinformatics. Bio-informatics holds the promise of yielding one billion times the processing power available today, underpinned by leading-edge R&D.

The term “bioinformatics” covers many fields: prescription drug design; high-throughput screening of medical samples for genetically-based diseases, genomics, proteomics, nanotechnology, and combinatorial chemistry (which returns us to drug design). Over time, humans have learned to communicate better, using less: from cave paintings to Chinese characters, to syllabaries, to alphabets, and now a binary system conveying vast amounts of data with strings of “0” and “1”. Each step achieves better communication using fewer characters and reduced input.

In the past half century we have discovered that our binary code and Nature’s share common ground. Binary code transmits a language; DNA conveys both the language and the expression of that language, be it a man or a mouse. Learning to use that language to express products is becoming ever more cost-effective. To sequence a gene in 1974 took $150 million, whereas the cost today is $150. The result of this cost curve is that knowledge derived from analysis of genetic material is exploding. Our ability to process information from genetic material is moving faster than Moore’s Law, leading to the potential for direct control over the future of life on our planet. In practical terms, US patent law was recently changed to deal with the incoming flood of applications having to do with genetic knowledge.

The trend to bioinformatics is not good news for efforts to close the gap between rich and poor, as only 12 countries generate 95% of all US technical patents. Among recent patents, three were biotech-related for every two relating to IT, meaning that in a very real sense biology is driving the research agenda and nations that achieve economic success are those that are also successful in attracting people who create wealth. This nation seems to be on the right track with the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chairs program. Wealth will be produced by brains “Made in Canada” and kept in Canada, or recruited to relocate here.

Experts suggest that silicon-based electronics technology will reach ultimate performance in ten years. That may happen when a switch effectively becomes one electron. Recent research is beginning to demonstrate that nearly every organic molecule switches electricity, making them likely candidates to power computers one billion times as efficient as we have now, using a fraction of the power. Our main challenge is to determine what research must be financed and conducted in the next few years to achieve an event horizon in molecular electronics 15 years hence.

In the future, a single electron will switch a computer circuit, while organic polymers could serve as molecular wires and proteins are fashioned into rotary motors. Human science is reaching that point. Miniaturized organic circuits propelled by rotary protein motors will find ready use as medical probes. Furthermore, once the science is perfected, organic molecular circuits will be induced to mass-produce themselves. If DNA can produce a human, why not a computer “chip”?

Robert Fripp (fripp@impactg.com) creates corporate and marketing communications for clients in high-tech fields.