Firepower in the Lab

Today's world poses a triple threat to the American population: infectious diseases, contamination of food and water, and bioattacks (biowarfare or bioterrorism). At least 17 countries are producing weapons of mass destruction using viruses, bacteria, or their toxins. AIDS, E. coli contamination, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and virulent flu strains are perhaps the best known of a host of disease threats. What these dangers have in common is the amount of data required to achieve solutions; in some cases, as much as a petabit (1 followed by 15 zeros) of data is required to study large numbers of samples from widespread locations.

Firepower in the Lab examines how the nation can combat this triple threat by improving our ability to detect, measure, and monitor harmful biological agents. It explores the potential of today's exciting new laboratory automation and computer technologies as well as the emerging tools of molecular biology—how we can generate and analyze more data quickly and reduce human hands-on involvement, which inevitably introduces errors.

The book discusses how to improve and apply technologies such as robotics, laboratory automation, "lab-on-a-chip," bioinformatics, and Internet control innovations. It reviews lessons learned from our experience with pandemic flu viruses. It also presents strategies for developing new high-throughput technologies, including how to address the lack of public funding for critical research undertakings.Table of Contents

• Front Matter
• Where the Bucks Stop: A Case for Intermediate-Scale Grants
• Tackling Grand Challenges with Powerful Technologies
• The Application of Mathematical Models in Infectious Disease Research
• Expanding the Worldwide Influenza Surveillance System and Improving the Selection of Strains for Vaccines
• Addressing Emerging Infectious Diseases, Food Safety, and Bioterrorism: Common Themes
• Laboratory Firepower for AIDS Research
• Input/Output of High-Throughput Biology: Experience of the National Canter for Biotechnology Information
• Applications of Modern Technology to Emerging Viral Infections and Vaccine Development
• Next Steps in the Global Surveillance for Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance
• Antibiotic Discovery by Microarray-Based Gene Response Profiling
• Sequencing Influenza A from the 1918 Pandemic, Investigating Its Virulence, and Averting Futeure Outbreaks
• Ensuring safe Food: An Organizational Perspective
• Foodborne Pathogen and Toxin Diagnostics: Current Methods and Needs Assessment from Surveillance, Outbreak Response, and Bioterrorism Preparedness Perspectives
• Food Safety: Data Needs for Risk Assessment
• Biological Weapons: Past, Present, and Future
• National Innovation to Combat Catastrophic Terrorism
• Flow Cytometry Analysis Techniques for High-Throughput Biodefense Research
• Forensic Perspective on Bioterrorism and the Proliferation of Bioweapons
• Biological Warfare Scenarios
• Integration of New Technologies in the Future of the Biological Sciences
• New Standards and Approaches for Integrating Instruments into Laboratory Automation Systems
• High-Throughput Sequencing, Information Generation, and the Future of Biology
• Summary and Next Steps
• Appendix A: Contributors
• Appendix B: Automation in Threat Reduction and Infectious Disease Research: Needs and New Directions (agenda of the April 1999 Colloquium)
• Index