The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) was etablished at Virginia Tech on July 1, 2000, with an allocation of $11.6 million in state funds over two years from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission. VBI is now based at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. The university also has authority to finance $21 million to construct a building for the VBI on campus. Approximately $12 million for start-up equipment will be raised from private and federal sources over the next four years. The total capital and operating investment for the Virginia Tech institute is expected to be more than $100 million at the end of six years, according to university president Charles Steger. More than 100 researchers will join VBI by 2004.
Virginia Tech faculty members, such as computer scientist Lenwood Heath, biotechnology researcher Cynthia J. Gibas, and Fralin Biotechnology Center director Tracy Wilkins, championed the creation of a bioinformatics center at the university.
Bioinformatics encompasses the design and construction of databanks for organizing and storing vast quantities of DNA sequence and genetic data, and the sophisticated computational methods to mine these databanks for novel discoveries. It includes technology development as well as data analysis techniques to explore how a myriad of genes work together as a complex system. Bioinformatics seeks to link genetics, gene expression (as protein products), protein function, the study of the entire metabolic pathway, and how these are involved in growth, development, and function of cells, tissues, and whole plants and animals.
Biotechnology research at the university is creating streams of data and contributing to biological databases. These are the foundations for future experimental biology. Several projects similar to the Human Genome Project are aimed at the discovery of the genetic blueprints of plants and animals. These will provide models that are important to agriculture and industry. The VBI will house investigators with interests spanning a range of agricultural, environmental, and biomedical applications.
Sobral was a vice president at the National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe, responsible for strategic direction, hiring, team building, and implementation and administration of scientific programs. He has also held scientific positions with the Center for Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture and the California Institute of Biological Research. His research interests focus on the genetics of plant-microbe interactions and comparative plant genomics and he has been involved in developing plant database systems, including a principal investigator for TAIR (the Arabidopsis Information Resource - www.arabidopsis.org).
Clark Tibbetts, associate director of the institute, was the founding director of the Institute for Biosciences, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology at George Mason University. Previously, he was a professor of microbiology at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine and at the University of Connecticut, and principal investigator on projects related to DNA tumor virus genomes and high-throughput automated DNA sequencing. He is the primary inventor of four patents based on results from these projects. He also served two appointments to the NIH-Genome Research Review Committee.
"The institute's work will have a strong applications orientation," says Tibbetts. "We are a research and economic development initiative. We are looking for technology to spin off as new companies with the goal of producing a revenue stream to support what we are doing.
"VBI and Virginia Tech scientists are already working together. We have funded pilot research programs, will collaborate in seeking funding for other research, and help support the development of an interdisciplinary graduate program in bioinformatics and computational biology. The institute makes it possible to expand bioinformatics with resources and interactions to complement the university's work."