Aviv Regev
Broad Institute
The Broad Institute was filled $ 32.5 million a philanthropist to take on one of the biggest challenges in biology: molecular mapping circuit inside mammalian cells. The Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will create what he calls an observatory of the cell that brings together biologists from the Institute and elsewhere to fight against this problem, similar to how astronomers gather in observatories telescope to collect and analyze data.
The gift announced yesterday comes from the Klarman Family Foundation, a Boston charity founded by financier Seth Klarman, who sits on the board of the Broad and his wife Beth. Broad will use the money to build on efforts by systems biologists to map how genes, RNA, proteins and other biomolecules interact in ways to operate cells in healthy people and in disease. "It is a big challenge, but it is one in which the groups around the world have made much progress in recent years," thanks in part to new tools to cut genes and analyzing interactions gene- protein, said biologist Broad calculation Aviv Regev, who will lead the observatory.
The $ 32.5 million will fund a 5 year program with three components, as Regev. One is the development of technology by improving existing tools and make them available "not only in the observatory, but to the broader community," Regev said. Another observatory will support small collaborative grants the Broad Institute and beyond
The third component has a specific goal. study "many layers of circuits as possible" in two to four types of mammalian cells to build a global model of internal operations a cell. this is a pilot project, Regev said, in order to finally be able to apply to any type of cell, she said. at this point, it could become the basis of a great effort International some use the term "Project human circuit," Regev said.
Regev said that while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding studies of cell circuits, the federal agency that would support not necessarily observatory wants to do. "It is one of those cases where philanthropy can really help you to push the envelope in terms of risk," she said.
Harvard University researcher Benjamin Ebert on stem cells, which will be involved in the new company, agrees. Ebert and Regev mapped gene expression in blood stem cells as they mature into different types of blood cells. The extension of this work to the proteins encoded by these genes is "much more complicated" because it involves hundreds of interactions, says Ebert. And because this model is "exploratory enough" and not test a hypothesis, it might not do well in NIH peer review, he said. "It is extremely helpful to have funding for this stuff."
A steering committee will refine the Observatory plan over the next few months, said Regev. For now, he sets up in the space in the Broad building.
The Broad is not alone: Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, the Salk Institute in San Diego, and the University of California, San Diego, are also the big launch efforts to study the cell circuits, said UCSD calculation biologist Trey Ideker. He suggests that these groups should eventually form a "large, coordinated science project" so they can divide the task of mapping circuits in different types of cells. "This is a very big goal and in a sense the logical successor the human genome project, "said Ideker.
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