The Sage Commons is a novel information platform being built by an international partnership of researchers and stakeholders to define the molecular basis of disease and guide the development of effective human therapeutics and diagnostics.
The Sage Commons will be used to integrate diverse molecular mega-data sets, to build predictive bionetworks and to offer advanced tools proven to provide unique new insights into human disease biology. Users will also be contributors that advance the knowledge base and tools through their cumulative participation.
The public access mission of the Sage Commons requires the development of a new strategic and legal framework to protect the rights of contributors while providing widespread access to integrative genomics resources.
Bio
Eric Schadt
Dr. Schadt oversees the scientific strategy for Pacific Biosciences, including creating the vision for next-generation applications of the company's technology, contributing to the evolution of Pacific Biosciences' transformative sequencing technology, and playing a key role in the company's strategic relationships.
He is also a founding member of Sage Bionetworks - an open access genomics initiative designed to build and support databases and an accessible platform for creating innovative dynamic disease models.
John Wilbanks
As VP of Science, John Wilbanks runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons. He came to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Previously, John was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in U.S. politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark.
John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He is a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation. John also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica's Digital Communities awards. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository organization.
Study of heredity in general and of genes in particular. Modern genetics began in the 19th century with the work of Gregor Mendel, who formulated the basic concepts of heredity. In 1909 the word gene was coined by Wilhelm Johannsen, thus giving genetics its name. In the same year, Thomas Hunt Morgan provided evidence that genes occur on chromosomes and that adjacent genes on the same chromosome form linkage groups. This led to the important discovery that genes affect molecular action at the cell level, as evidenced by human hereditary diseases such as inborn errors of metabolism. Molecular genetics began in earnest in the 1940s when Oswald Avery showed that DNA is the chromosome component that carries genetic information. The molecular structure of DNA was deduced by James D. Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. These and other developments led to the deciphering of the genetic code of the DNA molecule, which in turn made possible the recombination techniques of genetic engineering, discovered in the 1970s. An understanding of genetics is necessary for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of hereditary diseases, the selective breeding of plants and animals, and the development of industrial processes that use microorganisms. See alsobehaviour genetics; biotechnology.
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