CGB ‘Mission Multidisciplinary and Multidimensional' is not impossible

With the importance of life sciences growing quickly, IU Bloomington's new Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics has a huge job to do.

By Susan Williams

Photo by Paul Martens
Justen Andrews, genomics coordinator at the CGB

Photo by Paul Martens
Don Gilbert, coordinator of bioinformatics at the CGB

"Nothing can eliminate the physical barrier of miles, but we can catalyze interactions that will make it easier for people on one campus to benefit from colleagues on the other. So far, the major effect is that all of the relevant people have come to know each other much better, to know what's going on at each campus and to know what each campus needs."

–Peter Cherbas

But by January 2001, the IU Trustees had approved the center's formal creation, and funding from the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN) in July 2001 made the center a reality. Now, under the direction of Peter Cherbas, professor in the IU Department of Biology on the Bloomington campus, the CGB has a fully evolved mission that is complementary to the needs of IU's scientific communities and supportive of a variety of important national and international life science projects.

"The CGB is a multidisciplinary RUGS center," said Cherbas, "but it is neither a ‘service facility' nor a new department. Rather, it is an independent research center serving the needs of the IUB campus while being mostly independent of university financing. It is intended to act as an intellectual focus for research efforts in the fields of genomics and bioinformatics and to expand the community of life scientists on the IUB campus."

According to Cherbas, CGB's mission, with support from RUGS, COAS, the School of Informatics, the IUB Department of Biology and INGEN, is a multidimensional umbrella for life sciences.

It will actively promote the rapidly growing fields of genomics and bioinformatics by recruiting to the IUB campus technical, post-doctoral and faculty-level staff in those disciplines and will provide facilities, equipment and technical expertise that will enable IUB faculty to carry out the kinds of large-scale experiments that are becoming increasingly important in the life sciences.

The center's activities also include advising and collaborating with faculty to submit grant proposals, seeking independent extramural support for major projects of national and international scope, and investing seed funds to develop numerous projects to levels that will be competitive for extramural funding. Assisting in the negotiation of industrial contracts and/or licensing agreements for CGB-developed technologies is another center function.

Various important scientific databases are maintained through CBG, including the famous FlyBase, created by scientists at IU, Harvard, Cambridge and University of California at Berkeley as a clearinghouse for information about the genetics and genomics of the fruit fly (Drosophila). Other center scientists are or will be involved in similar work with worms (C. Elegans), water fleas (Daphnia) and sunflower plants (Helianthus). And CGB just received word that it will be one of two sites in the U.S. for doing genomics research on the malaria mosquito (Anopheles), research that is part of a campaign against malaria. (See accompanying stories about database and model organism activities.)

The CGB also is intended to act as an intellectual focus that expands the community of scientists and students from areas such as biology, chemistry, math, computer sciences, psychology and bioinformatics on the IUB campus and beyond. To that end, the center operates informal in-house roundtable discussions and sponsors speakers from other universities, both of which aid the community in beginning to incorporate new disciplines into its thinking, according to Cherbas.

The center also brings the scientific communities on the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses closer together.

"When the CGB accepted INGEN funding, one of its goals was to eliminate some of the barriers that tend to prevent Bloomington and Indianapolis from collaborating effectively," he said. "Nothing can eliminate the physical barrier of miles, but we can catalyze interactions that will make it easier for people on one campus to benefit from colleagues on the other. So far, the major effect is that all of the relevant people have come to know each other much better, to know what's going on at each campus, and to know what each campus needs."

With space on the Bloomington campus at a premium, the center currently is located at three different sites in Jordan and Myers halls until a new science building, scheduled for construction in approximately four years, is completed.