Welcoming
Remarks
by Dr. Raymond L. Orbach
Director, Office of Science, U.S. Department
of Energy
“Bringing the Genome to You” Public
Symposium
Baird Auditorium, National Museum of Natural
History
Washington, DC
April 15, 2003
Dr. [Cristian] Samper, Dr. [Francis] Collins,
Dr. [James] Watson, distinguished guests,
ladies and gentlemen:
I am privileged
to represent Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham
as the steward of the Office of Science.
This gathering
is as impressive as the event we celebrate
today: the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery
of DNA’s structure and the completion
of the Human Genome Project, a project that
attracted some of the finest scientists and
pioneers like Francis Collins and Craig Venter,
who led the private sector effort to decode
human DNA.
I am also pleased
to recognize Dr. Ari Patrinos, who has played
a pivotal role in the entire human genome
project.
The Department
of Energy’s Office of Science is the
largest supporter of basic research in the
physical sciences in the United States, providing
43 percent of government funding for this
vital area of national importance.
The research the
Office of Science supports in the physical
sciences underpins advances in genomics and
the life sciences.
No accomplishment
by the Department of Energy’s Office
of Science ranks higher than its historic
role in the launching of the human genome
program in 1986, as proposed by Charles DeLisi.
Today, our Joint
Genome Institute brings together the research
capabilities of three DOE national laboratories:
Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and
Los Alamos. The Joint Genome Institute’s
state-of-the-art Production Genomics Facility
in Walnut Creek now sequences two billion
base pairs of DNA each month – the equivalent
of two mammalian genomes each year.
Just as it pioneered
the human genome project, the Department of
Energy’s Office of Science is now spearheading
systems biology, studying the behavior of
the cell’s entire working complements
of proteins, their regulatory pathways and
their interactions as they perform function.
But these activities can only be carried out
on a scale that far exceeds today’s
capacities.
That is why the
Department of Energy’s Office of Science,
through the Genomes to Life program, is developing
plans for a set of four new research facilities,
intricately linked in their technologies,
capabilities, and capacities:
· Facility
One will be for the production and characterization
of proteins. This facility will use highly
automated processes to mass-produce and characterize
proteins directly from microbial genome data
and create “tags” to identify,
capture, and monitor proteins from living
systems – and to make them available
to all researchers.
· Facility
Two will be for whole proteome analysis, characterizing
the expressed proteomes of diverse microbes
under different environmental conditions –
an essential step toward determining the functions
and interactions of individual proteins and
sets of proteins.
· Facility
Three will characterize and image molecular
machines, isolating, identifying, and characterizing
thousands of microbes. It will develop the
ability to image component proteins within
complexes and validate the presence of these
complexes within cells.
· Facility
Four will analyze and model cellular systems,
combining advanced computational, analytical,
and experimental capabilities for the integrated
observation, measurement, and analysis of
variations in structure and functions of cellular
systems – from individual microbial
cells to complex communities and multi-cellular
organisms.
Making the most
advanced technologies and computing resources
available to scientists in small or large
laboratories will democratize access to the
tools needed for systems biology. These facilities
will open new avenues of inquiry and fundamentally
change the course of biological research by
greatly accelerating the pathways of discovery.
This is a day to
celebrate both individual efforts and cooperative
multidisciplinary research – the foundation
of America’s scientific leadership.
Congratulations
to all of you for your role in what is surely
one of the most important accomplishments
of mankind – the Human Genome Project.
Thank you.
