EMBL Barcelona and CRG kickstart new era of digital biology in Barcelona

'Big data’ has transformed the modern world. Computers scan millions of digital transactions to prevent criminals from carrying out credit card fraud. Multiple safety sensors work in tandem to warn pilots or drivers about imminent mechanical failure. Our society depends on technologies that can collect, analyse and interpret data to predict outcomes before they happen. Vast volumes of information are processed in real time, transforming previously unfeasible challenges into routine, mundane tasks.

This predictive power, enabled by vast computing power and artificial intelligence technologies, has revolutionised how we live, move and spend money. Scientists are now hoping to use technological advances to ‘solve’ a seven-decade problem: biology itself.

Since DNA was first described seventy years ago, biology has undergone a huge transformation. For example, researchers can sequence whole genomes cheaply and fast, image gene activity from microscopic bacteria up to the whole human body, and precisely modify the DNA of almost any organism.

However, life scientists have not yet achieved making biology as engineerable as an aeroplane or a bridge. For example, being able to predict how a protein will behave by simply knowing its amino acid sequence could usher in a new era of unprecedented possibilities for medicine, food security and the environment.

Data generation is no longer the main obstacle, with researchers having access to technologies that generate vast amounts of high-quality data. The deeper concern is a lack of theoretical and computational tools that help explain and predict complex biology – across all relevant scales, be it a cell, an organ, a whole body, or a whole ecosystem.

“Molecular biology and genomics have given us a good description of biology and a reasonable conceptual understanding, but we remain very limited in our ability to quantitatively predict how biological systems respond to perturbations such as mutations or drugs. Neither theory alone, nor standard one-by-one experiments of molecular biology will be sufficient to create truly predictive models,” explains ICREA Research Professor Ben Lehner, Coordinator of the Systems Biology programme at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG).

To go beyond extrapolating patterns of data, researchers need to devise new computational and theoretical approaches that can provide a deep causal understanding of living, biological systems. This requires not just powerful computing, but also new approaches to maths, simulations and artificial intelligence.

This is the aim of the new ‘Barcelona Collaboratorium for Modelling and Predictive Biology’, a collaborative space jointly run by the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and EMBL Barcelona. The initiative is spearheaded by Dr. James Sharpe from EMBL Barcelona and Dr. Ben Lehner from the CRG.

International leaders in the fields of theoretical biology, artificial intelligence/machine learning, complex systems, physics of life, computer science and engineering will come under one roof alongside local groups and work together to find ways of controlling and engineering biology. The collaboratorium will host both short-term and extended visits from independent research fellows, postdoctoral and doctoral researchers.

One of the main advantages of the new space is its physical distribution. It consists of an entire floor at the Fundación Pasqual Maragall offices in Barcelona. The space is open plan, designed specifically to promote collaboration and interaction.

“In computational and theory-driven research, breakthroughs in one area of biology, may be applicable to a very different topic. It is therefore more important in this type of science to break down barriers between fields, organise researchers in a more open and fluid way, bring the local population in constant touch with visiting international scientists, and encourage cross-talk and collaboration between an interdisciplinary community of different researchers,” explains ICREA Research Professor James Sharpe, Head of EMBL Barcelona.

The first call for Fellows has launched and selected personnel should be able to start working in the Collaboratorium before the end of the year. Each Fellow will hire teams that work on biological systems at any scale from individual molecules to networks, cells, tissues, organs and ecosystems.

The initiative launches with an inaugural symposium – ‘Programmable Life’ – on the 4th and 5th of October. Speakers include Debora Marks and Jeremy Gunawardena from Harvard University and Alexander Anderson from Moffitt Cancer Centre.

According to the promoters of the initiative, the new space is an opportunity to put Barcelona life sciences on the map. “The transformation of molecular biology into a predictive engineering science is going to be the most important technological advance of this century” concludes Dr. Lehner. “The places where this revolution happens will be where new industries pop up. It’s a big opportunity.”