BIOTECHNOLOGY MORE THAN MERE GENE-SPLICING.

Byline: Bill Gates 

Sometimes people ask me what field I'd be in if I were not in computers.

I think I'd be working in biotechnology.

I expect to see breathtaking advances in medicine over the next two decades, and biotechnology researchers and companies will be at the center of that progress.

I'm a big believer in information technology and the way it is revolutionizing how people work, play and learn. But it's hard to argue that the emerging medical revolution, spearheaded by the biotechnology industry, is any less important to the future of humankind.

It, too, will empower people and raise the standard of living.

Researchers are expanding our knowledge of how the body works at the most fundamental level, and this knowledge is giving us a deeper understanding of diseases and how to treat them.

A great deal of work remains, but it's being accomplished at an accelerating rate by scientists worldwide who both compete furiously and collaborate with each other.

When people hear the term biotechnology, they often think of gene-splicing and other forms of genetic engineering. This is an important branch of the science, but it's not the most critical part.

The biggest breakthroughs in medicine will result from the mapping and understanding of the human genome - figuring out the exact sequence of the 3 billion nucleotides that make up the estimated 100,000 genes that are the collective blueprint for human beings. It's an immense job.

If scientists were to identify the exact location of one tiny piece of genetic information per second, 24 hours a day, every day, it would take a century to map all 3 billion of them. Thanks to computers and specialized technology, researchers around the world are working at a much faster collective pace than that, and the project could be complete in as little as a decade from now.

So far the map shows most of the main features of the genome, and great detail about selective parts of it. To use a survey of Earth as an analogy, so far we've established the location of most countries and quite a few big cities, and we've made detailed maps of many important neighborhoods.

This research is a key to dealing with disease.

A disease for which there is no effective therapy is an unsolved mystery. Medical researchers need clues about how to devise an effective drug or therapy for the disease. What they need is a break in the case, a strong piece of evidence that can start them in the right direction.

One of the most promising ways to find this kind of clue is to compare in painstaking detail the genetic makeup of related people, some of whom have a disease that runs in the family and some of whom do not. The goal of this detective work is to find a mutant gene - one that has some of its genetic information scrambled - in the people who are afflicted.

Once a gene is associated with a disease, it can be used to find ways to interfere with the disease. If a drug or other therapy is found to treat people who have a genetic predisposition for the disease, it may well work for everybody else, too.

I think we'll eventually devise therapies for most diseases, an achievement that would improve almost everybody's life at one point or another. It will take many decades, perhaps even several lifetimes, to reach this goal but every advance along the way is extremely worthwhile.

Biotechnology is not my line of work, but I enjoy following the progress as a hobby. I helped finance a molecular biology program at the University of Washington, and I sit on the boards of ICOS Corp. and Darwin Molecular Corp., both small, privately held biotechnology companies.

(Although there are lots of great companies in the field, anyone contemplating investing should understand that it's hard to pick the winners from the losers, so it's very risky.)

One reason I'm attracted to the biotechnology industry is that it takes such good advantage of information technology. Computers are a fundamental tool for searching the genome to find patterns that match, modeling complex systems and communicating with other researchers.

Researchers mapping the genome, in countries around the world, use electronic mail to share ideas. They put their results up on the Internet and search for detailed information on the work of others. Darwin, for instance, has built a state-of-the-art intranet to assist its researchers.

With the aid of the Internet and other modern information tools, it took only eight months for a team that included Darwin scientists to discover a gene defect that can lead to premature aging. Researchers plowed through 650,000 nucleotides until they found a mutant gene to blame for Werner's syndrome, which causes 40-year-olds to look like - and have the infirmities of - 80-year-olds.

If it weren't for the Internet, this discovery might still be years away. Not only did the Internet allow for messages to be sent between the researchers at several sites, but it also allowed international databases of genetic information to be searched in a matter of minutes, instead of in days at a physical library.

MEMO: Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Corp., writes a syndicated column twice a month for the New York Times News Service. Questions may be sent to Gates by electronic mail. The address is askbillmicrosoft.com. Or write to him care of The New York Times Syndicate, 122 E. 42nd St., 14th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10168.