We can agree to disagree. Although I’m a huge, geeky fan of hers, I have to respectfully disagree with Apoorva’s post on Spoonful of Medicine about the Stanley Medical Research Institute’s $100 million gift to the Broad Institute (originally reported in the Boston Globe). The Broad Institute, which is arguably the be all and end all of genomics research, plans to compile genetic and clinical data from thousands of people in order to identify candidate genes that associate with psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Apoorva said:

But these are extremely complex disorders, each involving multiple genes. What roles do those genes play in the disease? Without understanding how the different genes interact and what the impact is of the different variations, the data will be all but meaningless.

I would argue that the very complexity of these diseases is the reason that such large datasets (and the bioinformaticians to make sense of them) are necessary. A really good example is in this month’s Nature Genetics. The Autism Genome Project Consortium identified new gene candidates associated with autism from a dataset containing genetic information from nearly 8000 people. Have they poof! figured out what causes autism? No, but they have identified a place to start.

Finding a place to start is really the whole point. These are disorders for which there just isn’t a lot to go on. Apoorva’s concern about understanding the roles of candidate genes in health and disease is really putting the cart before the horse. The molecular interactions between disease-related genes and their roles in psychiatric disorders can only be deciphered once candidates are in hand. With this fantastic grant, maybe the Broad Institute will get that far. That would really be something.