LG 177

Why has big data become a key challenge
in sciences such as biology?
In the last 20-30 years there has been a
shift of paradigm in biology. Biologists do
not study one or two proteins or genes
but the whole network these are part of.
This leads to a large amount of complex
data, which is referred to “Big Data”.
These data we receive from the experimental
groups are often very diverse and
have to be handled, stored and categorized.
At this point, biology has become a
science based on high levels of data integration
and on high-performance computing.
What does this amount of data concretely
represent in terms of volume?
The amount of data doubles every eighteen
months. And we now deal with Petabytes of
data; One Petabyte is the equivalent of 500
billion pages of standard printed text.
Therefore, we have to setup and run large
computer and storage facilities with thousands
of processors and an ever-increasing
number of hard disks. For this reason, a
significant part of the budget of a modern
Life Science Institute is now spent for information
technology. Therefore also, the LCSB
hosts the largest hardware installation in the
Luxembourg academic landscape.
How do you exploit all these data?
After we manage to physically handle the
huge amount of data, the next challenge is
to deploy and develop techniques to run a
cost and time efficient data analysis pipeline.
Automatic workflows need to be implemented.
This applies a range of prediction and filtering
steps in order to focus on the usable
data and avoid wasting time with the rest.
We develop completely new tools and techniques
to allow a better interpretation of the
data, to provide new insights and to generate
new hypothesis regarding the functioning
of complex biological systems.
New challenges on either the biology or
computer side are constantly arising. In the
coming years we will be able to understand
easy and simple disease networks, where the
disease is caused by gene defects.
However, it will be much more challenging
to understand complicated diseases which
are not caused by one or two genes but
which are caused by multiple perturbations
in the network, possibly by environmental
factors. And these are much harder to apprehend
and to understand. It is definitely a
challenge for at least the next twenty years.
Luxembourg Centre for Systems
Biomedicine
Université du Luxembourg
6, avenue du Swing
L-4366 Belvaux
About LCSB
Founded in September 2009, the Luxembourg
Centre for Systems Biomedicine is an interdisciplinary
research center of the University of
Luxembourg, based in Esch Belval since 2011.
It counts circa 230 employees and 15
research groups specialized in experimental
neurobiology, cell metabolism, computational
biology, bioinformatics, eco-systems biology
and in translational medicine.
Its aim is to accelerate biomedical research,
by linking systems biology and medical
research, in order to understand the principal
mechanisms of disease pathogenesis
and to develop new diagnostics and therapy
tools. Its research mainly focuses on
neurodegenerative diseases such as
Parkinson’s disease. Indeed, biologists,
medical doctors, computer scientists,
physicists and mathematicians are closely
collaborating in order to bring new insights
in complex systems such as cells, organs,
and organisms.
Its vision is to understand the mechanisms of
complex biological systems and disease processes
and as well to enable new ways to
cure and prevent human diseases.
LG - Juin 2015
49