[Next-Generation Sequencing Book]
  • [Photo] J.W. Bizzaro • April 18, 2001
    ``Imagine that an intelligence service were to discover some unintelligible messages being sent by a spy. At first the intelligence agents naturally assume they are looking at a code. They assume the task of decoding will be straightforward. But on closer analysis it turns out that the message means one thing if the signal has been received and acted upon, another thing if it has been received and not acted upon, another thing if the receiving apparatus is not switched on, and so on. Rather than just a code the message is a bit like a set of rules for a rather complex interactive game. There are feedback loops, and circuits within circuits, and a lot of things happening inside the cell but outside the genome, in the unfashionable realm of cytogenetics. NIH-funded geneticists don't even want to think about that, because they thought that by sticking to the four nucleotide bases, they had the problem neatly `digitized.' Computers would hum away unaided, 24 hours a day, and unravel the mysteries for them while they slept.''

    Full story:
    http://www.spectator.org/archives/0104TAS/bethell0104.htm

    There are some good points in the article, despite coming from a political magazine.

    Reference by Slashdot.org.

Discussion forums: Spectator: A Map to Nowhere: The genome isn't a code and we can't read it

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