BY SPYROS ANDREOPOULOS

In 1975 when I edited the Stanford M.D. magazine, I wrote an article predicting that the biological revolution sooner or later would transform Silicon Valley into Biotechnology Valley. It was quoted in the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, and some readers mistook my fearless forecast to mean that I was predicting the end of the computer industry in Silicon Valley.

This was not my intention. But it was not clear then as it is now that biology and the science of computing would someday become interdependent. The recent announcement that scientists have finished the sequencing of the human genome, an inventory of the genes used to assemble a living creature, could not have been possible without computers.

Research to understand the rules of heredity has now pushed biological science to a new threshold: It has transformed it to an information science. Geneticists used to do most of their work in living creatures or in test tubes. Although laboratories today are filled with test tubes and sequencing machines designed to read the basics of the DNA molecule, the heart of these operations is the computer. And it will become more so in the future.

Human cells contain an estimated 30,000 genes, according to recently published studies. Other organisms may have as many as 100,000 genes. Discerning the underlying order of so many genes and billions of bits of information "requires organizing the parts by their properties at diverse levels," says Dr. Eric S. Lander of the Whitehead Institute at MIT. "It would require simultaneous readouts of all components."

But despite the hype that has accompanied recent developments, genomic medicine will not be able to diagnose and treat every disease imaginable in 10 or 20 years. When it comes to judging whether research will illuminate our understanding of human disease, projections are dangerous because they are likely to be blurred by new surprises and factors that have not been adequately analyzed.

In the early 1970s, for example, I became involved in reporting the recombinant DNA developments and other findings about the gene and the cell originated by scientists at Stanford and UCSF.

The talk then was that gene therapy to allow replacement of defective genes in patients was just around the corner. Twenty-five years later, gene therapy remains largely a work in progress. With few exceptions, many people went for the hype and ignored the technical challenges involved. Fortunately, Stanford anticipated this problem when it built the Beckman Center and Clinical Sciences Research Building to house research for enhancing the binding between discovery and application.

The new challenge now confronting genetics is that many more researchers need to be trained in computer science to help develop microprocessors and software designed for biological research analyses. Learning, for example, how and when genes act through the proteins they encode inside the body requires powerful computer techniques.

Silicon Valley is strategically placed to accommodate the new information science derived from genetics. Companies with exotic names like Genentech, GeneCor, Novartis, ALZA, Roche, DNAX, Affymetrix and many others have been established here. They have been attracted by top-ranking scientific talent at Bay Area research universities and the marriage of gene research and computer science. Already, biochips pioneered by Affymetrix have DNA probes imbedded in them to study this or that genetic complement and eventually diagnose disease. It is an example of things to come.

Similarly, Stanford -- through its Bio-X project funded by a $150 million gift from Netscape co-founder Jim Clark -- is trying to strengthen research by bringing together people from medicine, chemistry, engineering, physics, biology and computer science in a single effort to nurture a cross-pollination of ideas.

Around campus, people are calling Bio-X as important to Stanford (and to Silicon Valley) as the decisions by Provost Frederick Terman and his contemporaries that created the Stanford Industrial Park 50 years ago. It's a statement that has a pleasing poetry to it, as one watches the work in progress.

The convergence of genomic medicine and computational biology involves other uncertainties. Genomic projects are generating huge wealth, and with this comes a new university responsibility -- to ascertain how to minimize conflicts of interest, and to set clear guidelines on how assets generated by federally sponsored research are distributed for maximum public benefit.

Tinkering with human genes raises ethical issues. These will be debated in the years to come and solutions will be found. But for those who live in the 21st century, the new gene technology promises to offer the most exciting ride of a lifetime.

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Spyros Andreopoulos is director emeritus of the Office of News and Public Affairs at the Stanford University Medical Center.