Crossing the chasm from in silico to in vivo

Atul Butte just published a nice paper which illustrates how biomedical informaticians can mine large public (gene expression) data bases to identify novel gene variants with some relevance to human disease. He then goes on to outsource his biological validation to a collaborator half way around our planet to show in vivo that these database driven leads can be reproduced independently. As many aspects of biological discovery become commoditized, it's work like this that reminds us that it is those who as the right questions and who can reach out for the right team to answer them. It should be an important goal of translational science to support agility in this kind of multidisciplinary science-swarming.