Laboratory for Molecular Modeling, School of Pharmacy,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
27599
Presented at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing , Big Island, Hawaii, January 1996
The emergence of powerful information technologies significantly transformed the landscape of information exchange in science. Electronic communication tools working in both asynchronous (e-mail, WWW) and synchronous (teleconferences, MOOs) modes are already incorporated into routine research environment. Geographically dispersed groups of scientists effectively communicate using computer networks. These groups often include people who work on related problems but belong to different segments of established communication chains. Equalized status and absence of power relations empower and liberate participants in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Therefore, electronic conferences and discussion groups are more likely to help in breaking communication barriers in interdisciplinary research areas, where communication might be additionally inhibited by language and attitude differences in the adjacent fields. It is particularly important in the intrinsically interdisciplinary areas, such as computational biology, where the wide distribution of backgrounds includes, but is not limited to molecular biology, biological and physical chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science. Virtual communities in biological sciences have a relatively long history but still face a number of outstanding conceptual and technical problems. Among important issues to be resolved is the control over communication environment with regard to the content of communication (moderated vs nonmoderated media) and access to information (commercial vs noncommercial resources), intellectual property rights, and educational aspects of CMC (segregated or integrated research and educational media). The largest CMC resource in biology, the BioSci hierarchy currently includes 80 groups, most of them interdisciplinary. BioSci continues to grow in both number of groups and number of participants. An example of a synchronous CMC tool in biology, BioMOO is a text and image-based virtual reality system that serves as a communication, teaching, and research resource. Other tools for CMC in biology include mailing lists and online conferences. Dynamics of the development of virtual communities indicates their increasing role on the frontiers of biological research and education.
New information technologies open a way for efficient collaboration between the laboratories and individual scientists without restrictions on their physical location. Real-time multimedia communication and data sharing enable large scale collaborative projects. Most appropriate for a particular project instruments, computational resources, methodologies from around the world could be employed in various combinations. Molecular informatics, a new field involving representation, encoding, storage, retrieval, processing, and exchange of information on geometry and chemical structure of molecules, particularly biological macromolecules is almost entirely based on a computer network collaboration. On-line servers with a remote access perform calculations and data analysis, including sequence alignment and structure prediction for proteins and nucleic acids.
Virtual libraries
Electronic publishing and on-line storage and distribution of previously published materials will likely change the infrastructure of scientific literature. Current model of centralized publishing with the institute of intermediaries between 'producers' and 'consumers' of information may be replaced by a completely distributed system with direct links between participants in the information exchange. Higher storage and search capabilities afford publishing with retrospective rather than preliminary quality evaluation. Hypertext functionality in scientific literature will allow active referencing, dynamic publishing and various multimedia applications. Among the successful examples of electronic publishing in biology are online versions of the Journal of Biological Chemistry , Protein Science , and BioMedNet, the "world wide club for biomedical scientists" with a number of full-text biological journals. Sophisticated search tools for biomolecular sequential, structural, and bibliographic information are provided by NCBI Entrez server.
Virtual classrooms
Computer networks support teaching and learning by various means, including hypermedia access to practically unlimited amounts of valuable resources, world-wide communication with peers for students and teachers, and evolving new forms of education, e.g. students participating in on-line scientific forums and discussion groups.