Software firm falls victim to shifting bioinformatics needs

Jonathan Knight, OaklandDoubleTwist, once one of the most dynam-ic bioinformatics companies of the dotcomage, died quietly on 7 March at its home inOakland, California.

At its peak, the software firm beat bothpublic and private DNA sequencers to acount of the genes in the human genome. Butits death, after a prolonged decline, was barelynoticed outside the world of bioinformatics.

DoubleTwist was born as Pangea Systemsin 1993, when Joel Bellenson and DexterSmith, graduates of Stanford University inthe heart of California’s Silicon Valley, decid-ed that a market was developing for comput-er software to manage the explosion of databeing produced by geneticists.

Four years later they came up with a business plan that attracted the interest ofthe valley’s top venture-capital firms. By theend of 1997, Pangea had $7.5 million in thebank and a new chief executive, John Couch.

Couch was a former employee of AppleComputer, and his vision for Pangea Systems,he said at the time, was inspired by Apple’smodel of user-friendliness. Pangea’s missionwas to develop tools that would makegenome analysis easy for biologists who hadbetter things to do than program computers.

Some Pangea Systems software sold quitewell, but the company was up against astream of free genome-analysis tools flowingout of academic institutions where studentprogrammers had begun doing thesis work

in biology labs. So in December 1999, thecompany reinvented itself as DoubleTwist.

DoubleTwist.com was Pangea’s new webportal, which allowed anyone with a browserto probe the public genome data. Accordingto old Pangea press releases, it was originallyintended to be free, to showcase the compa-ny’s genome-crunching ability. But when itbecame DoubleTwist, the company movedthe portal to the core of its business, chargingup to $10,000 a year for subscriptions.

At the same time, the company wassecretly collaborating with Sun Microsys-tems, a computer company based in PaloAlto, California, to scour the public human-genome database for genes. On 8 May 2000,less than two months before the announce-ment at the White House of plans to publishthe results of the public and private sequen-cing endeavours, DoubleTwist made head-lines by announcing that it had discovered105,000 genes in the genome.

Joseph Alper, who used to work for DoubleTwist, remembers it as an exuberanttime. The company, for example, took its 200employees on an outing to a horse race meet-ing. “It was typical of the dotcom attitudebefore the bubble burst,” he says.

In September 2000, the company regis-tered for a public offering on the stock market,but withdrew the offering a few months later,having missed the market’s high point.Despite a few software deals, DoubleTwist

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never obtained the income it needed to sur-vive. By January, its staff had been cut to 60.

“Most genome informatics is done in-house, in both industry and academia,” saysSean Eddy, who writes gene-hunting pro-grams at Washington University in St Louis,Missouri. Incyte Genomics, of Palo Alto,and Celera, the most famous of the genomeinformation companies, have both seen thewriting on the wall, and have sought to recastthemselves as drug-discovery firms.

These changes have shaken investors, butthe bioinformatics business is not dead, saysStephen Lincoln of InforMax, a biotech soft-ware firm based in Bethesda, Maryland.“Clearly we are going through a shakeoutphase right now,” he says. ■

Software firm falls victim toshifting bioinformatics needs

Baiting plan to remove fox threat to Tasmanian wildlifeCarina Dennis, SydneyThe deliberate introduction of foxes intoTasmania, the island off the southern coastof the Australian mainland, is threatening todevastate the island’s unique ecology,wildlife biologists say.

At a conference in the Tasmanian city ofLaunceston earlier this month, fox and pest-control experts called for steps to eradicatethe foxes before the breeding season beginsin July. Unless action is taken before then,they say, the island’s fox problem could getout of control.

Tasmania is the last refuge for a long listof species that have been wiped out inmainland Australia. Many of these arevulnerable to predation by foxes.

“The information that the authoritieshave received leaves no doubt that foxes weredeliberately brought into Tasmania,” saysNick Mooney, a member of the state

government’s fox task force, which was setup last year when the problem was firstidentified. It is believed that the foxes weredeliberately imported, perhaps byindividuals who wanted new game to hunt orwho were angered by the recent introductionof stricter gun-control laws. A policeinvestigation is under way.

There are estimated to be at least a dozenfoxes in the state, says Tony Peacock, chiefexecutive of Australia’s Pest Animal ControlCooperative Research Centre. “Unless actionis taken to eradicate the foxes before thebreeding season starts, the battle to keepTasmania fox-free may be lost,” says Peacock,who says that an estimated 77 native speciescould be in jeopardy as a result.

Farmers, biologists and conservationistsat the Launceston meeting agreed that thefoxes should be eliminated by baiting themwith sodium monofluroacetate — a poison

better known to farmers as ‘1080’ — inconjunction with shooting and trapping. Use of the bait is highly controversial inTasmania, where conservationists object tofarmers and foresters using it to controlpopulations of native animals, such asopossums and wallabies, which graze oncrops and tree seedlings. Biologists andwildlife managers are trying to work out how to present the bait in a form thatwill be accessible to foxes, but not to other native carnivores, which includemarsupial species such as quolls and theTasmanian devil.

Closer to breeding time, Roger Short, anexpert in reproductive biology at theUniversity of Melbourne, hopes to test theuse of sterilized vixens carrying oestrogenimplants — which keep them in constantoestrus or ‘heat’ — to lure male foxes, whichwill then be killed. ■

Final twist: the shutters are up at a company thatsought to gain from repackaging genomic data.

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© 2002 Macmillan Magazines Ltd