May 17, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
A new database could be an important tool in the battle against tuberculosis. Scientists finished sequencing the genome of the tuberculosis bacterium in 1998. Through a process called expression profiling, they can analyze infected tissue samples and determine which of the bacterium’s 4,000 genes are expressed and which are silent at specific stages of the disease.
The Stanford University School of Medicine — working with the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard School of Public Health — is developing a database that will serve as a central repository for such gene-expression data, information that currently is located in many different databases, only some of which are publicly accessible.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, has awarded a $7-million grant to finance the project.
Brought together, the gene-expression data will help scientists better understand the workings of the still-mysterious organism and identify new treatments to combat the disease, says Gary Schoolnik, a professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford’s medical school.
Dr. Schoolnik also thinks that the database will have a “democratizing effect” on research on the disease, which kills more than 1.5 million people around the world each year. “As long as somebody has a computer and access to the Internet,” he says, “no matter where they are in the world and no matter if they’re in a poor country or in a Western country, they’re able to have the same access to data as anybody else.”
