How analytics can feed the world

Imagine being handed a book you know can help feed hungry people all over the world. Now imagine you’re told it has three billion pages, and that it’s only half the story.

In the rapidly-expanding world of DNA sequencing, throw everything you think you know about “big data” out the window. Scientists are hoping to increase the world’s food supply by mining the ultimate data source: the genome.

A genome is the complete set of DNA for a particular organism – all the information about its heredity, and everything that makes it what it is. For the tiniest bacterium, that amounts to around 600,000 DNA base pairs. For more complex organisms, like cows or people, there are about three billion – times two.

“An individual genome has three billion letters, or data points, from each individual,” said Dr. Graham Plastow, a professor at the University of Alberta’s Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science. He’s also CEO of Livestock Gentec, where genomics research is finding real-world application in Canada’s livestock industry.

It’s a big job.

“There is a copy from the mother and a copy from the father,” said Dr. Plastow, “and each has three billion parts, and each copy of the genome is different. Typically there would be three million differences between the copy from the mother (the dam) and the father (the sire) of an animal.”

When the Human Genome Project began in October of 1990, the intent was to determine the sequence of all three billion base pairs that make up a single person’s DNA. It took 13 years, and cost nearly $4 billion. According to Dr. Plastow, many scientists were strongly opposed to the idea, calling it a waste of time and money. But it was an important first step.

“The first sequencing was like putting the first man on the moon,” said Dr. Plastow. “But advances in genome sequencing are outpacing Moore’s Law.”

Moore’s Law, for the uninitiated, is named for Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who noted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubled about every two years. Moore suggested the trend would continue, and technology experts have used Moore’s Law to successfully predict growth rates of everything from computer processing speed to the number of pixels on digital cameras.

But not genome sequencing; at the rate this science is progressing, it will soon be faster and less expensive than anyone in 1990 could have imagined.

“In 2009, we sequenced a cow,” said Dr. Plastow, “and that took four years and cost $50 million.” A year later, he said, two bulls were sequenced in six months for about $100,000. Last year, the world’s first Brahman bull genome was sequenced in three months for $20,000.

And this year, as part of a larger project, Genome Canada is funding the sequencing of 300 bulls, at a cost of around $10,000 each – and they expect new technology will allow a genome to be sequenced every day. Calling it “big data” doesn’t begin to do justice to the process – and Dr. Plastow said the sequencing, amazingly, is becoming the easy part.

“Making sense of the data takes a lot of analytical and computer power,” said Dr. Plastow. “Converting this data into information, and understanding what it really means, we will be able to make faster genetic improvements to improve food production, reduce the time to market – and get more from fewer animals.”

And getting more from less is what it’s all about. Today’s global population of seven billion is predicted to climb to around nine billion by 2050; to keep up with that growth, more food will have to be produced and more efficient sources of protein will need to be developed.

Dr. Plastow is among those who are looking to improve beef production through applied analytics. In many ways, the idea is a natural fit for the cattle industry, where selective breeding has been the norm for hundreds of years.

“Knowledge of genetic variants can be used to improve breeding,” said Dr. Plastow. Importantly, he’s not talking about genetic modification; rather, by comparing their genotypes, the bulls with the best genetic makeup can be selected for breeding programs.

The implications for successfully mining this data are enormous; breeding only animals with a robust, fast-developing family tree means increasing a herd’s efficiency with every new generation. Dr. Plastow estimates that if Livestock Gentec were able to bring a 5 per cent improvement in feed efficiency to just Alberta’s livestock industry, it would amount to $30 million in savings every year.

Or, as Dr. Plastow puts it, improving quality by knowing ahead of time what the next generation of animals will bring means better beef in the long run. And, most importantly, a way to increase the world’s food supply by mining the ultimate data source: the genome. And, it might answer that plaintive commercial question, “Where’s the beef?”

This article is FREE to use on your websites or in your publications. However, Troy Media, with a link to its web site, MUST be credited. This series is sponsored by Dr. Perry Kinkaide and the Alberta Council of Technologies. 

http://www.troymedia.com/2013/03/06/how-analytics-can-feed-the-world/