From Polymaths to Cyborgs - Convergence Is Relentless

By Ioannis Pavlidis, Ergun Akleman, Alexander M. Petersen

Multidisciplinary collaborations lead to humanity-helping breakthroughs.

Communications

This Article From Issue

July-August 2022

Volume 110, Number 4

Page 196

DOI: 10.1511/2022.110.4.196

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The first draft of the human genome—a historic map of our species’ genetic instruction manual—was completed not by biologists but by a computer science group at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Parsing the complexity of 2.85 billion nucleotides, written across more than 20,000 genes, required technical assistance from and close collaboration with researchers from many disciplines. Ultimately, the Human Genome Project included researchers from engineering, informatics, ethics, physics, biology, and chemistry.

The Laboratory for Genomics Research (LGR) explores how gene mutations cause diseases and develops technologies to rapidly accelerate the discovery of new medicines. Genomics as a field is an example of convergence science in action, as it necessarily marries biology and computational science. In the future, labs like LGR could use artificial intelligence and machine learning to guide drug development, solve complex problems, and analyze enormous volumes of data.

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