snowdeal.org > {bio,medical}informatics: ScienceDaily: Drug Discovery Team To Explore Newly Discovered Deep-sea Reefs

{bio,medical} informatics

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

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ScienceDaily Drug Discovery Team To Explore Newly Discovered Deep-sea Reefs

"Harbor Branch scientists, along with colleagues from the University of Miami, will use the Harbor Branch Johnson-Sea-Link II submersible to explore for the first time newly discovered deep-sea reefs between Florida and the Bahamas. The reefs were discovered in 2,000 to 2,900 feet of water last December by a University of Miami team using advanced sonar techniques. A primary goal of the upcoming expedition, which is funded largely by the State of Florida's "Florida Oceans Initiative," will be to search for marine organisms that produce chemical compounds with the potential to treat human diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.

"We've found incredible and surprising diversity at other deepwater reefs near Miami and Bimini, and some promising potential disease treatments, so we're very excited about the chance to explore these new areas," says Amy Wright, director of the Harbor Branch Division of Biomedical Marine Research."

redux [05.10.06]
Bio-IT World Gilna to Captain CAMERA
"Later this summer, coinciding with the publication of the first peer-reviewed paper on results from J. Craig Venter’s worldwide voyage sampling ocean genomes, researchers will gain access to version 0.5 of CAMERA—the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis—a platform replete with a wealth of data, analysis tools, and high-speed computational infrastructure.

“We’ll point readers to the portal from the paper,” says Paul Gilna, who was appointed executive director of CAMERA last month. Gilna is an experienced science program administrator who helped launch GenBank, worked on the protein data bank (PDB), and was a director of DOE’s Joint Genome Institute at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He hopes CAMERA will help jumpstart and grow the nascent field of metagenomics."

redux [05.08.06]
ABC Science Online Deep sea new site for 'lawless gold rush'
"Biotechnology companies are profiting from living resources found in the deep ocean without laws to ensure their actions are sustainable and fair, says an Australian environmental lawyer.

Dr David Leary of Macquarie University in Sydney says his research has revealed there are six companies selling products derived from the deep ocean and another eight developing them.

"They are the main players in the biotech industry; they're North American and European companies," he says."

"He says 70% of the ocean is beyond national jurisdiction and most of that is the area known as the deep seas or high seas, around 5 to 10 kilometres deep."

redux [04.30.02]
Washtech.Com A New Outlet for Venter's Energy
"Tapping a $100 million research endowment he is creating from his stock holdings, Venter plans to scour the world's deep ocean trenches for bacteria that might be able to convert carbon dioxide, the gas released when cars and power plants burn fuel, back into solid form without needing a lot of sunlight or other energy."

"Venter emphasized that from now on, his ventures will be set up as not-for-profit corporations. "I'm not in business anymore," he said."

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“Bioinformatics will be at the core of biology in the 21st century. In fields ranging from structural biology to genomics to biomedical imaging, ready access to data and analytical tools are fundamentally changing the way investigators in the life sciences conduct research and approach problems. Complex, computationally intensive biological problems are now being addressed and promise to significantly advance our understanding of biology and medicine. No biological discipline will be unaffected by these technological breakthroughs.”

BIOINFORMATICS IN THE 21st CENTURY

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