CLEVELAND -- Case Western Reserve University has received a $2.2 million grant from the Charles B. Wang Foundation, Inc. of New York to establish the Center for Computational Genomics, where researchers will employ the power of computer science to analyze the function of genes and proteins in health and disease.
Wang is the founder and chairman of Computer Associates, the fourth largest software company in the world. There are less than 20 centers like this in the country, and computational genomics is one of the hottest areas of research today, both in academia and the business world.
The center will be the home of an interdisciplinary research and training program tackling cutting-edge problems in genomics (the study of genes) and bioinformatics (computer analysis of genetic information) as they relate to using the genome sequence of humans and mice to learn about the susceptibility, progress, treatment, and prevention of human diseases and their models in laboratory mice.
The program will focus on three related research problems:
- Identification and characterization of duplicated segments in the genomes of mammals. These duplications contribute to several genetic diseases as well as to evolutionary adaptations. Researchers at CWRU have pioneered the analysis and characterization of these duplications.
- Architecture of complex traits. Research on complex traits -- meaning many genes are involved -- has revealed that several diverse biological traits act together to lead to commonly occurring genetic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, schizophrenia, cardiovascular disease, and many others. The researchers will look at the components that contribute to these diseases, such as genes, blood chemistry, protein information, and other features.
- Genomic analysis of physiological pathways. The genomics revolution is enabling a systematic analysis of the ways in which genes work together in health and disease. CWRU researchers are pioneering an experimental and computational approach for defining these pathways -- or the processes involved in the chemical reactions of the body -- as well as characterizing how biological functions are changed by genetic mutations, metabolic perturbations, and pharmacologic treatments.
The interdisciplinary nature of the program is demonstrated by the center having equal co-directors: Yoh-Han Pao, the George S. Dively Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Engineering from the School of Engineering, and Joe Nadeau, the James H. Jewell, M.D., Med '34 Professor in Genetics from the School of Medicine.
"With the recent reports of the human genome sequence and that of the mouse, research attention now shifts from questions of gene sequence and genome content to problems of protein function and how proteins regulate the biology of the organism," said Nadeau.
"These are hard, challenging and important problems. Their solution requires a novel combination of traditional basic research together with genomics approaches. Underlying all of the wet-lab research is strong research and training programs in computational genomics and bioinformatics, both to manage and analyze the new information about genes and functions in health and disease, but also to understand how genes function individually and collectively to elaborate organismal biology in health and disease."
Pao said, "The center will foster excellence and creativity in computational genomics research. The research issues will include questions of structure and function, and this is where powerful computational analysis, learning and inference capabilities play important roles in this research. We know that CWRU is deeply committed to genetics and bioinformatics research and we intend to play a significant part in that activity. We have good relationships with other such research activities at universities and businesses, and will maintain these and strengthen them as we go along."
Faculty from the engineering school who will be involved with the center are Cenk Sahinalp, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), and Meral Ozsoyoglu, professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
Other medical school faculty involved with the center are Evan Eichler, assistant professor of genetics, John Witte, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, and Hemant Tiwari, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics.
"Case Western Reserve is uniquely positioned to make major contributions in this area given our balanced strengths in medical research, genetics and genomics, computation and bioinformatics, and engineering and MEMS technologies," said James Wagner, interim president of CWRU. "This center will be an important catalyst for the university's work in this field."