say "welcome" to the machine!

This was yesterday's view of the corridor leading to the lab. The usual, crispy clean, futuristic hallway was blocked by what appeared to be some sort of heavy, important shipment of scientific equipment. In fact it was something much more than just that. It was our own "doomsday machine" or in brief "The Machine"!

For the more observative ones that are also aware of the latest(?) advances in the field of genomics (not that you deserve any merit for that) the inscription on the top left part of the wooden box that reads "Illumina" may say something. For the rest let me just inform you that what we are dealing with here is a third-generation genome sequencer, whose capacities involve ultra-rapid, massive DNA sequencing in short read-fragments, genome mapping and de novo sequence assembly. Oh yes! it also disposes of a bioinformatician-repeller!

Assuming this last (add-on) function, the Solexa-Illumina sequencer will soon start the process of expelling us, the entire Computational Genomics Group, from the fine altitudes of the 4th floor of the Biomedical Research Park of Barcelona, which we currently occupy, to the ground floor of the same building. I can see many of you raising an eyebrow in doubt of the potential of such a machine to kick out an entire department, but things are -as always- slightly more complicated than they seem to be. You see, this doomsday machine, is only the second to be purchased by our Institute and is very likely going to be followed by 6 or 8 more in the process of "our" Centre for Genomic Regulation becoming the "main node" in sequencing in the entire country. (Quotation marks added the way I feel like. It's my blog isn't it?")

I will skip posing the question related to whether spending tax-payers money on trying to become the "main node" is really worth it. I shall also omit questioning the quality of the data these machines are producing. No matter how hard I try over these last six months, they simply fail to make sense (or I am failing to make sense of their profound, unquestionably objective noise). What cannot pass unquestioned though, is something that has fewer things to do with the machines themselves and more with the people (us, the scientific community, or whoever they are) who manage them. Because one of the main side-effects of our dear Institute becoming the "main node" in genomic sequencing all over Spain, would be the displacement of roughly 30 or more "people who treat our data", formerly known as "bioinformaticians", formerly known as "theoretical biologists", (this last term being a remote reference to science therefore abolished some long time ago). In the course of this displacement, we are to pack books, CD, computers, notebooks and the rest to make space for the installation of "the machines", ironically the same machines which will carry on producing the data we will be asked to treat, analyze and (hopefully) interpret.

The bottom line of all of the above would probably be to ask oneself the obvious question: "Since when did people become commodities comparable to technology?".
But I am afraid the even more obvious answer would be: "When did they stop being exactly that?"

I shall leave that question to you, the (few but loyal) readers. What I shall leave to me and to my fellow colleagues is a slightly more existential (thus also more provocative) question. And that is to what extent are we ourselves responsible for such a treatment. I mean, there is a long distance from the "computational biologists" we started out to be, researchers with our own projects and ideas to the "data analyzers", the last part (human but not much less dispensable) in a high-tech pipeline that we have turned ourselves into.

Is it my idea, or are we in the process of losing something more significant than our 4th floor sea view?