College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Helping hand

Without the statistical analysis provided by the Baker Center, life would be difficult for the Plant Sciences Institute.

Nine centers make up the Plant Sciences Institute at Iowa State.

Most have fancy sounding names like the Center for Designer Crops, the Center for Plant Transformation and Gene Expression, and the Center for Plant Responses to Environmental Stresses.

All have a direct impact on studying, researching and ultimately developing the plant sciences.

All that is but one center. For faculty in this center using highly technical scientific equipment is not a daily occurrence.

But it is highly doubtful that the Plant Sciences Institute would be able to achieve its goals without the Laurence H. Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics.

The Baker Center was established to help deal with the staggering amounts of sequence and gene expression data produced by new technologies associated with the plant sciences. Center researchers develop advanced methods, algorithms and programs for acquiring molecular genetics data in an orderly fashion, analyzing it and providing analysis back to plant scientists.

"The mission of the Center is to facilitate the bioinformatics work of the faculty by providing computer support, fostering communications among the faculty and between the faculty and external laboratories and granting agencies," said Hal Stern, professor of statistics and interim director of the Baker Center. "The Baker Center has strong ties to the other Plant Sciences Institutes centers - Baker Center faculty consult and collaborate with research groups within those centers."

Bioinformatics is basically a set of tools associated with the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data created by the new technologies. And without it, is difficult to think how the Plant Sciences Institute could function.

"Bioinformatics has certainly had an impact on the plant sciences," said Stephen Howell, director of the Plant Sciences Institute.

While the Baker Center was established in 1999, a group of interested mathematics, computer science and zoology/genetics faculty members formed an informal group two years before. That successful experience with what became known as the Iowa Computational Biology Laboratory enabled the Baker Center to be established when family members of Laurence H. Baker, a 1954 Iowa State graduate, donated $10 million in his memory. Baker's career focused on developing computer systems for Pioneer Hi-Bred International and many other businesses and institutions.

Stern became the interim director of the Baker Center this past fall after the retirement of the first director, Jim Cornette, University Professor of mathematics. Stern estimates that there are more than 60 Iowa State faculty from 14 departments in four colleges that are informally associated with the Baker Center. A majority of the computational scientists involved come from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences departments of computer science, mathematics, statistics and zoology/genetics.

The Baker Center holds a series of bioinformatics seminars on campus and next fall will co-sponsor the Iowa State University/University of Iowa 2001 Joint Bioinformatics Workshop in Ames. The first workshop sponsored by the two institutions was held last fall in Iowa City.

Next fall, the Center also plans to submit a proposal with researchers from the University of Iowa to serve as a National Center of Excellence in Biomedical Computing. Howell says he hopes to continue to expand the circle of influence of the Baker Center.

"I have an interest in seeing if bioinformatics here at Iowa State can flourish and became a nationally and internationally recognized area," he said.

Since his arrival on campus in 1994, Stern has worked with the animal breeding research group in the College of Agriculture. But in addition to his responsibilities as interim director of the Baker Center, he has also become involved with research projects now centered in the plant sciences.

"Bioinformatics can not only have an impact on the plant sciences, but the tools we develop (to analyze this data) can apply just as well to animal genomes and the human genome," Stern said. "To me this is just a fascinating new area of application for statistical methods. The ability to bring statistical methods to bear on new scientific areas is what I love about statistics."