Automating Science--glycolysis equations derived (Introduction)

by xeno6696 @, Sonoran Desert, Monday, October 17, 2011, 16:47 (4786 days ago)

news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/10/robot-biologist/

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

Automating Science--glycolysis equations derived

by David Turell @, Monday, October 17, 2011, 17:40 (4786 days ago) @ xeno6696

news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/10/robot-biologist/

The paragraph on 'why biology needs automation' is most fascinating to me. A single cell needs 10-15,000 protein molecule equations.

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/10/robot-biologist/

Automating Science--glycolysis equations derived

by xeno6696 @, Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 13:31 (4786 days ago) @ David Turell

David, you're letting big numbers distract you. I've seen fluid dynamical equations to the tune of 1.5M variables. Weather models can easily top that by another 5M. The number of variables or equations have nothing at all to do with system complexity. What generates complexity would be the inner workings of the equations, and the group I'm working with models gene networks with pure 1 and 0 arithmetic.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

Automating Science--glycolysis equations derived

by dhw, Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 14:59 (4786 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt (xeno) has drawn our attention to

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/10/robot-biologist/

The robot biologist certainly raises some interesting questions, not the least of which is its relevance to life and the human brain:

According to Wikswo, the crowning source of complication is that processes at all these different levels interact with one another. “These multi-scale interactions produce emergent phenomena, including life and consciousness.”

Would it be a stupid question to ask whether all these biological processes are able to interact with one another BEFORE there is life? Perhaps we need a definition of life first.

Similarly, in relation to the problem of consciousness, I seem to remember Tony (balance_maintained) asking a question along the lines of: if the brain is a computer, who or what switches it on? Romansh put it differently: “Which came first the thought or the brain chemistry?”

My favourite passage here, though, is the quote from Emerson Pugh: “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”

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