Misbehaving molecules, watch out!
An artist's rendering of the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology being built at Stony Brook University. Credit: Stony Brook University photo
The future of medicine centers on studying molecules that make us sick, then finding ways to make them start behaving. That future will include designing medicines that will instruct the errant molecules, in effect: “You know the way you always are? Don’t be that way.” What’s going on at Stony Brook University this week will help get us there.
To reach that goal, science has to be able to examine the tiniest bodily structures, using the techniques of nanoscience to peer into objects as small as a billionth of a meter. That produces vast amounts of data, but that information isn't worth much until it's analyzed. So science also has to be able to use immensely powerful computer analysis to figure out all the complex mathematical principles that will help us understand how all these biochemical reactions interact. That will give us the knowledge we need to fine-tune the genetic switches inside our cells that somehow go wrong and cause disease.
So Stony Brook has a right to pound its chest a little bit to celebrate two advances in that direction: One is a formal dedication of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology. The center has been open for a year, under the direction of Ken Dill, a member of the National Academy of Sciences recruited from the University of California at San Francisco. He’s an expert on protein molecules. The scientists at the center come from the departments of chemistry, computer science, applied math and statistics, molecular genetics and microbiology and physics. These researchers will work closely with scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
The other event is an anonymous $10 million gift to set up a new Institute for Advanced Computational Science. That computing power will help scientific work in a broad array of fields, from physics to bioengineering. Actually, it’s a $20-million grant, because the Simons Foundation Challenge Grant will match it. James Simons is a former Stony Brook math chairman who created a highly successful hedge fund called Renaissance Technology, along with Henry Laufer, the benefactor of the Laufer Center.
So this is a week that sends a message to misbehaving molecules. Stony Brook is coming to get you.
