Ngày tải lên :
06/03/2014, 04:20
... sense of
humour: the informationdemands in genomicsarestaggering. The genomecontains
twokinds of digitalinformation,onethatencodes the proteinandRNA‘molecular
machines of life’,and the otherbeing the regulatorynetworksthatspecifyhowthese
genesareexpressed in time,spaceandamplitude.
DNAinformationislayeredandarranged in ahierarchy,startingwith the gene,
then the RNA, then the protein, then the protein interactions, then the protein
complexes,then the networks of proteincomplexes in a cell,then the tissues and
organs,then the individualorganism,followedbypopulationsand the ecosystems in
whichtheylive. In thiskind of discoveryscience,masteringsuchvastquantities of
informationtoanswerimportantquestionsisaskillandanart.
And the hardware? The firstautomatedsequencingmachinetookaday, in 1986,
tosequence250 of the threebillionbasepairs.Ittook the humangenomeproject
tenyearstosequence the humangenome,twoyearsshorterthanpredicted;and the
privatecompanyCelerawithitsso-calledshotgunapproachtooklessthan the public
consortium’s ... SydneyBrenner’slovely,dolorous sense of
humour: the informationdemands in genomicsarestaggering. The genomecontains
twokinds of digitalinformation,onethatencodes the proteinandRNA‘molecular
machines of life’,and the otherbeing the regulatorynetworksthatspecifyhowthese
genesareexpressed in time,spaceandamplitude.
DNAinformationislayeredandarranged in ahierarchy,startingwith the gene,
then ... SumeriansandBabylonians,whochosefor
reasonsunknowntoustodayabase of 60,whichweuse in respect of measuringtime,
withanhourbeing60minutesandaminutebeing60seconds;or the measurement
of acircleinto360degrees,each of 60minutesdividedinto60seconds.
Countingis, of course, the crucialfirststep;butitisnotarithmeticanditcertainly
does...