SEATTLE -- Former University of Washington faculty member Dr. Leroy Hood has recruited four UW colleagues to study the human genetic code at his new private research center.
Dr. George Lake, UW astrophysicist and a NASA project leader in supercomputing, had decided to leave the university to join Hood's nonprofit Institute for Systems Biology.
Dr. Ruedi Aebersold and Dr. Alan Aderem, who helped Hood found the UW Institute for Quantitative Systems Biology, and Dr. Ger van den Engh announced Thursday they are also leaving to study with Hood the recently completed sequencing of the human genome.
Aebersold is a world-renowned expert in protein chemistry. Aderem is an expert in immunology, a primary area of interest for Hood's institute. Van den Engh is a biophysicist who developed key instruments to differentiate cell types.
Hood left UW in December due to frustrations with the university and started his private institute. He is considered a pioneer of the automated DNA sequencing machines that made the genome project possible.
While mapping the genome is completed, turning it into a practical resource about the human body will require a massive and creative effort, Hood said.
"We want to move from information to knowledge," he said.
Hood's institute has been funded by private donors, industry and government sources. He envisions a more entrepreneurial setting than the university but less commercial than an industrial laboratory.
"It's a career change to be sure," Lake told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It should be very challenging."
After Hood left, the UW created the Cell Systems Initiative, which is operated by Dr. Robert Franza. The institute, like Hood's and many others, combines computing with biology.
The absence of the four researchers won't have a major impact on the university's long-term goal to be a leader in molecular biology and genomics, said L.G. Blanchard, spokesman for the UW School of Medicine.
"The UW School of Medicine is as strongly committed as ever to having an excellent molecular biology research program," Blanchard said.
Hood said his center is not in competition with Washington or part of the "brain drain" at the university. Hood said he recently met with UW President Richard McCormick to discuss a collaboration between the two institutes.
"I think the institute is going to be a tremendous resource for the university," he said.
Identifying the exact sequence of all the DNA in the entire human genetic code is hailed as one of sciences' greatest accomplishments.